Hospitality Hiring Crisis

David Sherwyn is the John and Melissa Ceriale Professor of Hospitality Human Resources and a Professor of Law at Cornell University’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration. He is also the academic director of the Cornell Center for Innovative Hospitality Labor and Employment Relations as well as a research fellow at the Center for Labor and Employment Law at New York University’s School of Law. In addition, Professor Sherwyn is of counsel to the law firm of Stokes & Wagner. Prior to joining the School of Hotel Administration, Professor Sherwyn practiced management-side labor and employment law for six years.

Professor Sherwyn has published articles in the Arizona State Law Review, Berkeley Journal of Labor and Employment Law, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, Fordham Law Review, University of California Hastings Law Journal, Indiana Law Journal, Northwestern Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and the University of Pennsylvania Labor and Employment Law Journal. His research interests include arbitration of discrimination lawsuits and union-management relations.

Ilene Weisbard Berman, ILR ’86, is the founding partner of Continuum Legal Group LLP in Atlanta, Georgia, where she counsels and provides training to her clients on a wide range of employment-related issues, such as reductions-in-force; performance management and discipline; employment contracts; severance agreements; employee policies; handbooks and procedural manuals; restrictive covenants; FMLA, ADA, and FLSA compliance; background checks; termination and other personnel decisions; and handling complaints of harassment, discrimination, or other allegations of misconduct. 

Prior to Continuum, Ms. Berman was a partner, Vice Chair, and Employment Practice Group Leader at Taylor English. She is a regular panel speaker at Cornell University’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration’s Labor and Employment Law Roundtable, and she presents at human resources and employment law conferences throughout the United States. In addition, Ms. Berman is an active member of the Anti-Defamation League’s Education Committee.

Zev J. Eigen is the founder and Chief Science Officer of Syndio Solutions; he has been at the forefront of cutting-edge HR technology for more than a decade. Combining his overlapping areas of expertise in labor economics and employment law with deep experience in data science, predictive modeling, and economic sociological research, Dr. Eigen is an internationally recognized expert in these fields and the author of more than a dozen scholarly articles and books. 

Dr. Eigen served as a full-time professor at Northwestern University School of Law with an appointment at the Kellogg School of Management. He was also the Irving S. Ribicoff Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School, and he held a visiting professorship at NYU Law School, where he is a research fellow. In addition, Dr. Eigen served as Senior Counsel, Labor Relations, with Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation in Los Angeles, California, and previously headed up the data science and analytics function for the world’s largest defense-side labor and employment law firm.

Dr. Eigen holds a Ph.D. from MIT (’09), a J.D. from Cornell Law School (’99), and a B.S. from Cornell University (’96).