Exploring Foundations of Sustainable Commercial Real Estate DevelopmentCornell Course

Jeanne Varney serves as the Arthur Adler ’78 & Karen Adler ’78 Director of the Center for Real Estate and Finance and is a Senior Lecturer at the Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University. Jeanne is based in the Properties Development and Management department, where she is responsible for the curriculum in Fundamentals of Hotel Development and Management, Hospitality Asset Management, Sustainable Development, and Introduction to Sustainable Tourism.

Jeanne has chaired/co-chaired multiple industry roundtables, chairs several Nolan internal committees, and has led multiple student industry competitions. She is a current member of the Hospitality Asset Manager Association (HAMA) Education Committee and an International Past President for NEWH, Inc.

Jeanne holds an MBA from The George Washington University and a B.S. in Hotel Administration from Cornell University.

Brad Wellstead has gathered several careers on his way to becoming a faculty member at the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration. In 1983, he graduated from the Cornell School of Architecture, Art, and Planning and worked as an architect for several years as a design-build developer and as a senior design architect with Group 70 International in Honolulu, Hawaii. The work in Hawaii awakened a passion for hospitality and resort design.

Mr. Wellstead reoriented his career toward project and construction management with an MPS/M.S. degree from the Cornell School of Hotel Administration in 1996. That degree afforded him the opportunity to explore some of the early research forays into sustainable development, resulting in a thesis on sustainable tourism development. Mr. Wellstead relocated to Portland, Oregon, to pursue his dream of founding Ethos Development, a project management services firm. Over 18 years, Ethos managed over $2.1 billion in projects across numerous sectors, including hospitality, healthcare, research, government, and higher education.

Mr. Wellstead returned to Cornell to initiate his third career in academia. His academic research interests include new trends in hospitality design, exploring the dynamics of the feasibility/development transition, the art and organization of project management, the value of sustainability practices, and participation in the continued status and excellence of the Nolan School of Hotel Administration as the ultimate hospitality business school.

Denise Ramzy is a designer and educator who brings a sustainable, human-centered, and entrepreneurial approach to design and business curricula, focusing on design strategy and management. She is a Senior Lecturer in Design Strategy at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. Prior to that, Ramzy was a lecturer in the Department of Design + Environmental Analysis in the Cornell University College of Human Ecology. She serves as faculty advisor for Medium Design Collective, a platform for interdisciplinary design at Cornell.

Before coming to Cornell, Ramzy was an assistant professor at Parsons School for Design and interim director of the strategic design management program at Parsons Paris. She has taught design studios, seminars, and lecture courses to undergraduate, graduate, and adult students at Columbia University, New York University, Parsons, and Pratt Institute.

Ramzy’s research and practice bridges multiple disciplines within the built environment. She is the founding principal of Field Dimension, a research and design practice focused on sustainable design and redevelopment and the intersection of design and business in the built environment. Recent projects include Design Diversions, a curated series of design-related events started in 2010, which serves as both a research platform and an educational and community resource.

Formerly, Ramzy worked in the New York office of the multidisciplinary design consultancy, Pentagram, on architecture, design, brand, and strategy projects. Previous experience includes project management for a wide range of organizations, including Columbia University on its campus expansion and Tate Modern during its inaugural year.