I am currently a PhD candidate at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration. As a native Californian, I grew up in Southern Californian and later moved to Northern California to attend the University of California at Berkeley (Go Bears!). It was in California where I found my combined love for the outdoors, food, and finance. However, it was in Up-State New York where I found my love for hospitality, service, and consumer behavior.

My research combines a myriad of academic personalities: quantitative methods (financial forecasting, analysis, modeling, experimentation, and data mining) are combined with a deep understanding of food and beverage operations. I strongly believe this diverse set of skills helps give me a unique persepctive in evaluating current hospitality industry operations, and improving future operations.

My finance experience stems from a background as an investment banking analyst with Salomon Smith Barney's media, telecommunications, and online media group, and as the primary business plan analyst for the seed-stage venture capital firm, Skipstone Ventures, LLC. Today, I draw on both backgrounds to build top-down and bottom-up pro formas and trianulated valuations for restaurants and food & beverage operatons.

On the food and beverage side, my operational experience comes from not only physically working the back of house for highly rated restaurants (Wente Vineyards, Zagats 26; Arizmendi Bakery, Zagats 24), but also from working with world-renoun chefs such as Michel Roux, Todd English, Alfred Portale and Jose Andrés as a teaching assistant for Cornell's Guest Chef Series. In addition to line-level operational experience, I have analyzed and evaluated the market strategies and financial and operational performances of over 30 restaurants, and have conducted data-driven analysis and demand-based pricing projects for over a dozen well-established multi-unit brands. Over all, my restaurant industry analysis experience includes revenue management, pricing, evaluation of promotions/LTOs, menu design, and financial performance evaluation and forecasting.

Aside from my research and extracurricular activities at Cornell, I dearly misses the high peaks of the Sierra Nevadas (12 of the 14 fourteeners down, 2 more to go!), the powdery snow of Lake Tahoe, and the accessible Chinese, Mexican, Indian, and Vietnamese foods I have come to enjoy. In the meantime, I make time for recreational springboard diving and kayaking on the Finger Lakes.

Please refer to my CV for more detailed information about my professional and academic background.