General Managers

Program Capstone

Immersion Program

Mr. Kasikci leads Bentley Management, a Los Angeles-based strategic advisory and asset management firm providing hospitality operating companies and owners of hospitality assets a strategic counsel to explore qualitative and quantitative improvements in people, product, service and profit. Bentley Management specializes in providing organizations managerial guidance to create a customer by crafting, executing and sustaining their strategic direction to achieve desired results in revenue generation, market share, customer retention and overall profitability. With clients ranging from luxury hotels, boutique resorts, world-class cruise products, prestigious private clubs and pedigree properties, his premise that “the client should know his/her own business best” forms the basis of his strategic advice and his ability to craft a strategy with his clients and instill a system that facilitates strategic thinking that can be successfully implemented to achieve choreographed results in a hyper-competitive world.

Over Mr. Kasikci’s hospitality career, he most recently served as Regional Managing Director, North America, Mexico, Caribbean and Brazil at Belmond Hotels overseeing management and strategic direction of eight luxury properties within the portfolio. Mr. Kasikci acted as Vice-President of Strategic Planning & Development for Montage Hotels & Resorts from 2007 to 2010, a position that followed the successful launch of Montage Hills, which achieved Five Star status and became the only new hotel in California to receive the 2010 Forbes Five Star Award.

A graduate of the Hotel and Catering College in Tegernsee, Germany, he holds a Master of Business Administration degree from Claremont Graduate University, Peter F. Drucker Graduate Management School, in California. Following his apprenticeship at Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich, Germany, Mr. Kasikci held several senior management positions with leading hotels in Germany and casino resorts in South Africa. He was brought to America by Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts in 1987 where he managed the newly opened Four Seasons Newport Beach, prior to moving to Beverly Hills and joining The Peninsula Group.

Kate Walsh is Dean of the Cornell Nolan School of Hotel Administration and E. M. Statler Professor. A professor of management, Dean Walsh has been a member of the Hotel School’s faculty since 2000. She 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 degree in Accounting from Fairfield University.

Dean Walsh’s primary research is in identity, leadership, and career development. She also conducts research examining the impact of strategic human capital investments. In addition to contributing to numerous books, Dean Walsh’s articles have appeared in such outlets as Journal of Management, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Human Resource Management Review, Organization Science, Career Development International, The Service Industries Journal, Trends in Organizational Behavior, Research in Management Consulting, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, The Learning Organization, International Journal of Hospitality Management, and The Cornell Hospitality Quarterly.

Dean Walsh has extensive industry experience. She is the former director of training and development for Nikko Hotels International, corporate training manager for the former Bristol Hotels, and senior auditor for Loews Corporation. Dean Walsh is also a former New York State Certified Public Accountant.

Dean Walsh began her second term as dean on July 2, 2021. Since the beginning of her administration, she has focused on positioning Nolan for the future of hospitality business education as well as contributing to the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. This includes undertaking a comprehensive renewal of the graduate and undergraduate curricula, developing Nolan’s online global presence, launching two new graduate degree programs, and providing thought leadership for the hospitality industry, most notably through the creation of industry-based webinars to guide the industry during the pandemic as well as supporting extensive outreach and engagement through Nolan’s six centers and institutes.

Dean Walsh serves on the boards of the American Hotel and Lodging Association, including serving on its Educational Foundation’s DE&I committee, and Yonsei University’s School of Business.

J. Bruce Tracey is a Professor of Management at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration. Professor Tracey has taught courses in human resources management for undergraduate, graduate, and professional audiences throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, winning several awards for his efforts. He has conducted research on a wide range of strategic and operational-level HR topics, including the roles and relevance of HR flexibility, the impact of training initiatives on individual and firm performance, employee turnover, employment law, and leadership. Professor Tracey has presented his work at numerous regional, national, and international conferences, and his research has been published in many of the top-tier discipline and applied outlets, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Management, Organizational Research Methods, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, and the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law. Professor Tracey’s sponsors for research and consulting include Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Hilton Worldwide, Marriott International, Mövenpick Hotels and Resorts, Wynn Resorts, Hillstone Restaurant Group, and Uno Chicago Grill, and he has been cited in the New York Times, USA Today, Fast Company, and the Orlando Sentinel, among other popular press outlets.

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 School of Hotel Administration. 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.

Cathy A. Enz is Lewis G. Schaeneman Jr. Professor of Innovation and Dynamic Management, Emeritus, at the Nolan School of Hotel Administration in the SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University.

Professor Enz’s prior administrative roles included serving as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Associate Dean for Industry Research and Affairs, executive director of the Center For Hospitality Research, and School of Hotel Administration management area coordinator. She has published over 100 journal articles and book chapters, as well as five books in the area of strategic management and innovation. Professor Enz’s research has been published in a wide variety of prestigious academic and hospitality journals, such as Administrative Science Quarterly, The Academy of Management Journal, and The Cornell Hospitality Quarterly.

Professor Enz has taught courses in innovation and strategic management and is the recipient of both outstanding teaching and research awards. She developed the Hospitality Change Simulation, a learning tool for the introduction of effective change which is available as an online education program of eCornell. Three strategic management courses are also available through eCornell. In addition, Professor Enz presents numerous executive programs around the world, consults extensively in North America, and serves on the Board of Directors of two privately owned hotel companies.

Prior to her academic activities, Professor Enz held several industry positions, including strategy development analyst in the office of corporate research for a large financial services organization and operations manager responsible for Midwestern United States customer service and logistics in the dietary food service division of a large U.S. healthcare corporation. She received her Ph.D. from the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University and taught on the faculty of the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University prior to arriving at Cornell in 1990.