A historian, restaurateur, university president, automotive executive and banking administrator all agree: As faith in institutions falters, today’s leaders should be less self-assured.
The five Granite State business leaders recounted their career journeys and what they’ve learned over the years during NH Business Review’s 2025 Leadership Unscripted forum. Returning to the Rex Theatre in Manchester, the June 6 panelist event gave each leader time to speak before opening the floor to audience questions.
This year’s leadership cohort kicked off with JeriAnne Boggis, the executive director of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire. She was joined by Tom Boucher of Great NH Restaurants, which operates T-BONES, Cactus Jack’s and the Copper Door Restaurant; former Southern New Hampshire University President Paul LeBlanc; Grappone Automotive heir Amanda Grappone-Osmer; and Dianne Mercier, retired president of People’s United Bank.
So, how do leaders overcome their internal stubbornness and selfishness?
For Boggis, whose organization teaches overlooked and sometimes uneasy historical truths about the state’s history, it’s about compromise.
“One of the things we do, and I think it’s really important for a leader, is to meet people where they are,” Boggis said. “… We have to learn how, where and when to see those people.”
The Trail has its origins in Portsmouth, but Boggis emphasized that it was essential to expand to “make history visible” using heritage markers that document Black history at relevant sites. After eight years of work, the Trail has 16 markers, and its latest marker will appear in July in Hampton to recognize Dinah Small Burdoo, a local formerly enslaved Black resident.
Interest in the grassroots initiative’s programs has also grown during that time.
Boggis said recent speaking events in towns across the state have attracted more than 500 people, up from a few dozen initially. And more recently, Boggis has been asked to teach a course at Northeastern University on community involvement based on her efforts.
“(Telling stories) creates roots; it creates belonging and it creates a sense of responsibility for the town in which you live,” she said. “The other thing when we think about leaders is staying on purpose. It’s not so much what it is you do, but why you do it and how.”
Grappone-Osmer has been reflecting on why and how she has been part of the Grappone Automotive Group for much of the 28 years she has been in the business. She and her brother, Greg Grappone, were the only members of the fourth generation to inherit its leadership after they each served a decade in other positions.
But Greg’s time at the top was short-lived, Amanda said. He was diagnosed with a form of cancer twice, with the second leading to his death at age 35 after an unsuccessful stem cell transfer from Amanda.
For his sister, the loss led her to consider what it took for the business to persevere and how she could provide for its continued success by looking inward at the past.
“Ancestors worked so hard to get to the point where they can open a gas station to feed their family,” Amanda said, referencing her Italian immigrant great-grandparents who founded Grappone. “Then the ensuing generations got to build on the previous generations. It didn’t start with me, and I really hope it doesn’t end with me.”
She stated she sought to ensure this when she and other leaders recently chose to sell Grappone’s Toyota and Hyundai dealerships to new owner Matt McGovern, who is expected to close on the purchase in the next few months. The decision came with the strongest leadership lesson Amanda encountered up to that point: “What’s the consistent message? Can people really trust what you’re saying? Can they believe you?” To answer, she allowed employees at the dealerships to meet McGovern over a Q&A session and gave them the choice to stay with Grappone if they preferred. However, because her company had created a “culture where people love each other,” she found that the employees from the Toyota and Hyundai arms of the company had formed a strong bond over the years.
“What has helped me stay the course is our mission, which is very simply stated, ‘to build lifelong relationships,’” Amanda said.
Longtime SNHU President LeBlanc expressed that mission mattered to him during his tenure, joking that he was at odds with his “younger and dumber” self, who rejected the idea.
“The reality is, it’s mission that gets our people up and running through walls for our students,” LeBlanc said. “They believe in it, and the interrogation they will always subject us to as leaders is: ‘You talk the talk, but do you walk the walk? Are you living the mission?’” After 20 years of governing the institution as it grew into an online learning powerhouse with national reach, LeBlanc interrogated himself in that way. When SNHU reached a $500 million valuation, he called for a dinner with his board, requesting that they give him six months to determine if he should continue in his position.
“I spent a lot of time talking to friends and colleagues and reaching out to CEOs around the country … and they all said that there are periods in an organization’s scaling of incremental and evolutionary growth,” he said. “Then there are inflection points where stuff changes, where the organization or the team that got you there is not what’s going to get you past those.”
LeBlanc said his belief he fulfilled his role also came after he had made missteps in his years as leader, and that the school administration “keeping me was being tolerant of mistakes.”
One instance of this happened when LeBlanc was approached by the principal of Manchester Memorial High School one year, who urged him to consider giving a full-ride scholarship to a student who had fled parental abuse and slept on friends’ couches yet maintained a high grade point average. He approved.
“When she arrived, everything went wrong,” LeBlanc followed, sharing that the student was in a physical dispute with her roommate and faced a conduct review.
“She eventually failed, dropped out, got pregnant, and had a life that went with all the fixes of poverty; and I thought I got it wrong.”
But, mistakes like that were ones he felt resulted from his perspective of serving others and helping them find belonging. With a later student, he said he realized it was more about them making the best of the opportunities they’re given.
Some 33-odd years before LeBlanc stepped down, Dianne Mercier found herself in a situation of putting her best foot forward after surviving turnover amid seven New Hampshire banks shuttering in 1991. This was after Mercier had been hired as a teller at Amoskeag Bank in 1985, despite having no prior experience, then being promoted to operations manager and customer service.
“I had to get into training for something else,” Mercier said. “So I became a credit analyst at what was then First NH Bank, which became Citizens. The only thing I didn’t do every three years was quit my job.”
She moved to Ocean National Bank in 2003, which was acquired by People’s United, now M&T Bank. And although she only stayed within two core banks during her career, Mercier said that the regular internal moves taught her the most significant lesson, propelling her into leadership.
“You have to make a choice,” she said.
“Are you going to carry around the weight of difficulty of change, the discomfort of change and the fear of change? Or are you going to carry around the opportunity that no matter what happens, you have a choice about what’s going to happen next, or how you’re going to respond to that?” Mercier, with advice from fellow panelist Tom Boucher, said to “show up,” as she had found in her experience that sticking around when others quit can help hopeful leaders rise upward.
Showing up for Boucher looked like persistence, by starting from the bottom and working in different kitchen roles for 10 years at T-BONES in Hudson. The businessman said he took up waiting tables there in 1987 after sensing a calling for the food and beverage industry.
Then, in 1994, the restaurant’s founding partners tapped Boucher to be a partner in opening western eatery Cactus Jack’s in Manchester. And from there, he became a co-owner of the greater holding company in 2000.
“One of the questions posed to me was, ‘Did you choose leadership, or was it thrust on you?’” Boucher said. “I chose it; I went after it, I asked for it, and I wasn’t afraid because the only answer I could get was, ‘no.’ I didn’t get that — the answer was ‘yes.’” Now, he’s been CEO for 21 years after receiving the title in 2004, and has opened more T-BONES locations, Bedford’s Copper Door and Laconia’s T-BONES WinniDeck in that time.
But, Mercier also stressed that showing up “is half of the work” of leading. The other half?
“Just be there for other people,” Mercier said. “ … That’s what people in the nonprofit world do, that’s what leaders do, what neighbors do and what family does.”
