Advanced Hospitality Management

Reneta McCarthy has both teaching and practical experience in hotel operations. She began her career at Marriott International, where she worked as a housekeeping manager and then as director of services in the full-service hotel division. She later transferred to Courtyard Hotels, by Marriott, where she became one of the youngest general managers of a Courtyard property. She became director of rooms at The Statler Hotel at Cornell in 1992 and joined The Hotel School faculty in 1995, where she teaches courses in hotel and casino operations. She is the faculty advisor to Hotel Ezra Cornell (HEC), an annual, student-run industry conference that attracts 300 hospitality leaders to campus each spring.

Alex Susskind is a Professor of Food and Beverage Management and is currently serving as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. Professor Susskind earned his Ph.D. in Communication from Michigan State University with a specialization in organizational communication and his MBA with a concentration in personnel and human relations. Alex earned his undergraduate degree at Purdue University in Restaurant, Hotel, and Institutional Management and is also a trained chef with a degree in Culinary Arts from The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Prior to starting his career in academia, Alex was a chef and restaurant operator for both independent and multi-unit restaurant companies in the Northeastern and Southeastern United States.

Dr. Kate Walsh was named the seventh dean and E.M. Statler Professor of the School of Hotel Administration on June 16, 2017. She served as interim dean and E.M. Statler Professor for one year beginning July 1, 2016, the first day of operations for the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. A professor of management, she has been a member of the school’s faculty since 2000. Dean Walsh received her Ph.D. from the Carroll School of Management at Boston College and her MPS degree from Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration. She holds a Bachelor of Science in accounting from Fairfield University.

Dean Walsh came to Cornell with extensive industry experience, including posts as Director of Training and Development for Nikko Hotels International, corporate training manager for the former Bristol Hotels, and senior auditor for Loews Corporation. She is also a former New York State Certified Public Accountant.

Since the beginning of her administration, Dean Walsh has focused on revamping The Hotel School’s alumni outreach; working with the faculty to undertake a comprehensive review of the graduate and undergraduate curriculums; and reengaging with the hospitality industry, most notably through the creation of an industry immersion initiative for faculty. Already, members of the faculty have traveled to Washington, D.C.; New York City; and Los Angeles to learn from corporate executives and other experts in the hotel, restaurant, real estate finance, and technology sectors.

In addition to these ongoing efforts, Dean Walsh is working in collaboration with her colleagues on the Cornell SC Johnson leadership team on growth initiatives to strengthen the school and take advantage of opportunities afforded by the establishment of the college, including the potential to develop programming in New York City.

Sheryl E. Kimes is a professor of operations management at the School of Hotel Administration. From 2005 to 2006, she served as interim dean of the school, and from 2001 to 2005, she served as the school’s Richard and Monene P. Bradley Director of Graduate Studies. Kimes teaches revenue management, restaurant revenue management, and service operations management. She has been named the school’s graduate teacher of the year three times and was awarded a Menschel Distinguished Teaching Fellowship by Cornell University in 2014.

Kimes’s research interests revolve around revenue management in the restaurant, hotel, and golf industries. She has over 100 articles in leading journals, such as Interfaces, Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Service Research, Decision Sciences, and the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly.
She was awarded the CHR Award for Industry Relevance in 2010, 2012 and 2014 and was given a lifetime achievement award by the Production and Operations Management Society in 2010.

Kimes has served as a consultant to many hospitality enterprises around the world, including Chevy’s Fresh Mex Restaurants, Walt Disney World Resorts, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, Starwood Asia-Pacific, and Troon Golf. She was given the Vanguard Award for Lifetime Achievement in Revenue Management by the Hotel Sales and Marketing Association International in 2017.

Kimes earned her doctorate in operations management in 1987 from the University of Texas at Austin.

Rob Kwortnik, Associate Professor of Services Marketing, joined Cornell’s faculty after earning his Ph.D. in Business Administration from Temple University in 2003. He also earned a B.A. in Journalism from Temple and an MBA from California State University, Northridge. Professor Kwortnik’s research focuses on consumer behavior in service contexts, with special attention to service experience management. He has published in the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Service Research, The International Journal of Research in Marketing, and the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, among others. He has been honored eight times as a Teacher of the Year by students at The Hotel School. Prior to his career in academics, Professor Kwortnik held several professional positions in marketing and was a travel industry consultant. He is a recognized expert on the leisure cruise industry.

Steven Carvell joined the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration’s finance faculty in 1986 and is currently a Professor of Finance in the SC Johnson College of Business. Over the past 33 years, he has taught undergraduate and graduate courses such as “Advanced Corporate Finance,” “Capital Budgeting,” “Financial Strategy,” and “Investments.” Dr, Carvell has also been an active teacher in executive education since 1990, working with almost every major domestic and international hotel company to create custom courses for hotel executives with companies like Hilton, Marriott, InterContinental Hotel Group, Taj Hotels, Jumeirah, Accor, Sol Melia, Le Meridien, Shangri La, and Peninsula. Dr. Carvell has also authored eight distance-learning courses through eCornell that are among the most widely demanded courses offered. He has held academic leadership positions at the School of Hotel Administration since 1999, serving as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2007 to 2016 and the Academic Director of the Pillsbury Institute for Entrepreneurship from 2013 to 2016

Dr.  Carvell has published numerous articles in academic and professional journals including the Financial Analysts Journal, Journal of Portfolio Management, the Harvard Business Review, and the Cornell Quarterly, and he is the co-author of “In the Shadows of Wall Street.” His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, Institutional Investor, Financial World, and Leaders. Dr. Carvell has recently finished a major project designed to identify the determinants of hotel demand for U.S. hotels and another on economic and capital market antecedents of venture capital commitments. He is currently working on a project to disaggregate hotel room rates within urban markets and another to determine the risk-return characteristics of hotel room rates in major U.S. markets.  Dr. Carvell is also involved with evaluating the effectiveness of hotel company business strategies using strategic benchmarking and economic value-added analysis.

Dr. Carvell has worked for professional money managers in the area of applied strategy in the equity market and served as a consultant to the Presidential Commission on the 1987 stock market crash. His consulting interests include valuation and risk analysis in feasibility studies, hotel debt capacity, strategic benchmarking, and corporate and financial strategy.

Scott Gibson is the J.E. Zollinger Professor of Finance at the College of William and Mary Mason School of Business. His current research interests include optimal financing strategies for hospitality firms and the effect of institutional investor trading behavior on securities prices. His research has appeared in hospitality-focused journals including the Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, Journal of Hospitality Financial Management, the Cornell Hospitality Report and top finance journals including the Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Financial Intermediation, International Review of Finance, Journal of Portfolio Management, and Journal of Financial Services Research.

His research has also been featured widely in the financial press, including articles in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, Barron’s, Business Week, Bloomberg, Financial Advisor, and Institutional Investor.

Before returning to his alma mater Boston College where he received a Ph.D. in Finance, Professor Gibson worked as an analyst with Fidelity Investments and as a credit team leader serving a Fortune 500 clientele with HSBC Bank. Lecturing about corporate finance and the creation of shareholder value, he has received numerous teaching awards at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive levels. He has also been named as an outstanding faculty member in Business Week’s Guide to the Best Business Schools. Professor Gibson currently serves as an editorial board member of the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly (CQ).

Mary MacAusland, CPA, PhD, is a senior lecturer at the School of Hotel Administration in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, where she teaches courses in financial and managerial accounting and financial statement analysis. Prior to joining Cornell, she was actively engaged in both academe and industry, serving in senior positions in several organizations. She was previously on the faculty at the University of New Hampshire and Franklin and Marshall College, and taught for several years at a small community college. MacAusland also worked in the life-care management and development field as a controller, and has held numerous positions with the United States Tennis Association (USTA), most recently as vice-chair of the audit committee. She served on the executive boards of USTA Middle States, and the Berks County Chapter of the American Red Cross for many years, and chaired several special events raising significant amounts for local charities. MacAusland was also a longtime member of the investment committee for the Berks County Community Foundation, where she helped to establish investment guidelines and monitor performance for $50 million in managed assets, and was integral in establishing a permanent fund with the foundation to provide grants for tennis programs for at-risk youth.

Dave Roberts retired from Marriott in 2019, after 23 years with the company. Most recently, he was the Senior Vice President of Revenue Strategy and Solutions; in this role, he was responsible for revenue management strategy and execution for around 7,000 hotels worldwide. He also led revenue analytics, providing top-line analysis for the company; as well as sales systems, providing strategy, development, and deployment of technology to manage meeting and event business. Prior to this role, he led Consumer Insights, providing consumer research and analytics for regional and corporate stakeholders. Mr. Roberts has also been Regional Vice President of Market Strategy for Marriott’s Eastern Region, as well as Vice President of Global Pricing, in addition to several other roles in the company.

Prior to Marriott, Mr. Roberts was a manager in the Finance Department at American Airlines, working on airplane purchases and route economics. He was also a technical consultant on missile defense for the U.S. Department of Defense, as part of the “Star Wars” initiative. Mr. Roberts has a B.S. and an M.S. in Operations Research from Cornell University, as well as an MBA with majors in Finance and Economics from Northwestern’s Kellogg School. He holds a U.S. patent on a software product (a “data matching” algorithm) and has published several academic papers on such topics as forecasting, options pricing, and customer choice modeling. Mr. Roberts was on IBM’s Business Analytics Advisory Board for six years and on Cornell’s Center for Hospitality Research Advisory Board for five years. He has been a frequent speaker at industry events as well as several top universities. In his spare time, Mr. Roberts enjoys martial arts and astronomy.