MMH
MMH Alumni Profiles
The School's graduates make up one of the most active alumni networks in the world. As an MMH student, your access to over 11,000 active alumni members will open doors to opportunities and expand your network of resources.
The School first offered a professional master's degree in 1973. The Master of Professional Studies in Hospitality (MPS) was awarded until 1995. In 1996 the degree title was changed to the Master of Management in Hospitality (MMH).
- Karan Narang - MMH '07
- Neha Pandey - MMH '06
- Salim Damji - MMH '00
- Shalinder Singh - MMH '04
- Howard Wein - MMH '99
Karan Narang - MMH '07Karan Narang works for Trinity Hotel Investors, a global hotel real estate company based in New York City. He remembers feeling overjoyed after his Hotel School classes with real estate Professors Jack Gorgel and Jan de Roos.
“They were amazing classes,” Narang said. “What we learned was directly relevant to industry. I applied to Cornell because it was the only school with hotel real estate,” he says.
Narang had studied at a Swiss hotel school, transferred to University of Delaware for courses in finance, and earned a diploma from the Culinary Art Institute in Vancouver, British Columbia. Then he returned to India to work with his father, who is a real estate developer.
As an MMH student, Cornell’s Center for Hospitality Research invited Narang to represent CHR at an American Lodging Investment Summit (ALIS) conference. There, Narang meet the principals from Trinity Investors.
The company generally turns around 2- and 4-star hotels – buying them, improving them, hiring new management, changing the brand, and selling within five years.
Narang, who is a member of the New York City chapter of Hotel School Society and stays in touch with classmates, comments, “The first time I saw my company sell a hotel, it was to a classmate of mine! If you’re doing hotel real estate in New York City, it’s good to be from Cornell. Anybody and everybody went to Cornell.”
Neha Pandey - MMH '06
Neha Pandey has what she calls, “a fantastic opportunity for someone straight out of school.” She is a global brand manager for Westin Hotels & Resorts Worldwide.
The daughter and granddaughter of hoteliers in India, she lived the life before studying it. The Grand Hyatt in New Delhi and W Hotels Worldwide in New York City gave her additional hands-on experience.
Cornell she calls, “the Mecca of hospitality.”
“In my courses I used to wonder, ‘How often will I ever use statistics and food and beverage management in the real world?’” she says. “The truth is, I use them all the time. New branding initiatives often include concepts from design, technology, food and beverages, and when you sell an idea to senior management, finance and statistics come into play.”
She said that Cornell’s network of alumni is very, very strong, and she gives it credit for her landing a top job right out of school – her job came through a Hotel School internship.
A freshly-minted alumna, Neha Pandey has been invited as a guest speaker in Professor Chekitan Dev's class on brand marketing, selected by Professor Tim Hinkin to be a coach for the Leadership Development Program for new students, and to participate in Hotel Ezra Cornell.
“I love to stay in touch with my mentors and classmates,” she said.
Salim Damji - MMH '00
Salim Damji arrived at Cornell with a portfolio of hotels behind him.
To prepare himself for his family’s business he studied hard and then worked for seven years.
Now a silent partner in the family business, he is also developing his own firm, consulting on boutique hotel projects.
He started his career with an all-Cornell team of consultants at Arthur Andersen in Los Angeles. Then Starwood Hotels in White Plains, New York, made Damji its director of real estate and new business development, in charge of analyzing and acquiring properties and re-branding them. For CB Richard Ellis in New York City, he served as president of Hotel Investment Properties and Capital Markets.
Then, he says, “I left the corporate world behind. What for others was a career destination was for me an ecological tour to learn as much as I could, and then leave. I am making my own investments now. Using a network of contacts, I cultivate equity partners. The largest part of my address book are my Cornell contacts.”
A member of the New York City Chapter of the Cornell Hotel Society, Damji returns to Ithaca as a guest speaker in Hotel School courses.
Salinder Singh - MMH'04
After working for the premier hotel company in India – The Oberoi Group – Shalinder Singh came to Cornell “to be in the international league. If that is your goal the Hotel School is your destination,” he says.
Internships with Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, a Four Seasons Hotel; IDeaS Revenue Management; and PM Hospitality Strategies (PMHS) led to an offer from PMHS, where he is now the vice president of new hotel openings.
PMHS develops and operates select-service, extended-stay, and full-service hotels that are branded with Hilton, Starwood, Marriott, and Choice Hotels groups.
Does he miss luxury hotels? “Yes,” he says,” but if I am the GM of a select-service hotel and we do not have Clefs d’Or concierges, that is no excuse for us being less receptive to guests and not anticipating their needs.”
PMHS is a Cornellian company. Dave Pollin and Greg Miller are Hotelies. Miller was Shalinder’s mentor while he was in school. Rob Buccini, also a founding partner, is a Cornell College of Arts and Sciences graduate.
Shalinder Singh now serves as a mentor to current students, and as vice president for the Washington D.C./Baltimore Chapter of the Cornell Hotel Society he stays in touch with Cornellians.
“If I approach a Cornell Hotel School alum anywhere on the planet, even the CEO of a huge company, I know that person will make the time to help me. And I would respond the same way, too,” he says.
Howard Wein - MMH '99
As chief operating officer for the Starr Restaurant Organization, Howard Wein pretty much runs that company for creative visionary Stephen Starr. Inevitably, much of the work is financial.
“I went to graduate school thinking of owning my own restaurant company,” says Wein, who had been pastry sous chef at Bouley Restaurant, development consultant for Myriad Restaurant Group, caterer for Woodstock ’94 and for the Beastie Boys’ 1995 North American tour. “But,” he says, “I needed to know the business side, intensively.”
After Wein joined Starr restaurants in 2004, the group expanded from Philadelphia to New York City, Atlantic City, Miami, and Las Vegas. When Wein was recruited, the group had eight restaurants, it now has 16. Revenues tripled, from $45 million to $120 million.
“What I gained from the Hotel School was everything I wanted – an education in business and finance and incredible world-class exposure to people in the industry. I saw the whole Cornell brand and what it can do,” he says.
Once or twice a year, Wein returns to Cornell to recruit employees or to speak in Professor Tim Hinkin’s organizational behavior course or Giuseppe Pezzotti’s course in food and beverage management.
“And Giuseppe brings his students to my restaurants every year. That’s another way that we stay in touch,” he says.
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