Rising Star on the Rise: Kelly Fabian Leads AI Innovation at Dine Brands
Kelly Fabian, IT Project Manager at Dine Brands Global, Inc., was presented with the Rising Star in Restaurant Technology Award at MURTEC 2025 Experience Matters.
The Rising Star Award is presented to individuals in the early stages of their careers who have made notable contributions to their organization. Fabian exemplifies this through her leadership, execution and forward-thinking approach to innovation.
Her colleagues point to Fabian’s attention to superior organizational skills and attention to detail, as key factors in earning the confidence of the company’s engineering team. “She has an exceptional track record of on-time, on-budget delivery for our Digital and Data Management project portfolio,” shared one colleague. In 2024 Fabian volunteered to lead Dine’s AI Foundry PMO to overseeing the creation of virtual AI Labs to develop innovative solutions. Her resourcefulness and initiative stood out.
To date, Fabian is most proud of standing up the Dine Brands' AI Innovation Foundry in quick response to the breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. “It started as a very small and scrappy team. My initial focus was on establishing a scalable process that would enable us to build, test and pass/fail prototypes quickly. In parallel, we also collaborated with the broader organization to gather use cases and then partnered with major A.I. hyper-scalers to determine which solutions would best fit our needs.”
The result: A new framework and 10 active AI experiments at Dine Brands.
Looking back, it is easy to see Fabian’s path to a career in restaurant technology. She has had a lifelong relationship with technology. “It started when my dad, a software engineer, gifted me his old computer, installed with strategy games. Growing up, I saw first-hand how technology helped run and expand my family’s small food & karaoke business,” she recalls. “I got to test out their home-grown ordering system and enjoyed the food I ordered afterwards as a treat!”
Those formative experiences led Fabian to major in computer information systems in college and to seek out restaurant technology projects.
Passion for Execution
While Fabian is jazzed about generative AI, what she is really passionate about is implementation. “What I’m truly passionate about though is how we execute and deliver projects that run on these new technologies. Agile and waterfall frameworks serve as great baselines, but I’ve found taking an adaptive approach to be most effective with new tech. Learning what works best for a given team and translating that into scalable processes has been both challenging and rewarding,” she says.
The Power Mentorship
Mentorship has been foundational to her growth. “Aside from giving me invaluable advice, my mentors have advocated for me to their peers and the broader organization. When I first started, a VP within IT trusted me with his entire program, an opportunity that otherwise might not have been given to my then-junior self. More recently, two senior executives gave me the chance to work on cutting-edge generative A.I. projects.”
That support has shaped Fabian’s trajectory. “Their mentorship was the foundation of my career’s upwards trajectory. They’ve inspired me to be a mentor in the future.”
Receiving the 2025 Rising Star in Restaurant Technology Award is a meaningful milesonte for Fabian. “It is a reminder of how fortunate I am to have leaders who champion me, and a strong team that I deeply enjoy working and growing with,” Fabian says. “It’s also a testament to the importance of recognition. This award has inspired me to further hone my skills and to help others so that they can also be recognized for their hard work.”
The Top Women in Restaurant Technology Awards and Rising Star Awards, sponsored by Milagro, were presented at MURTEC on March 11. Nominations for the 2026 Top Women in Restaurant Technology and the Rising Star in Restaurant Technology will open December 1.