Meet Emily Yee: A Heart in Hospitality

Say hello to Emily Yee, a 2019 Homaro Cantu scholar. Emily may have graduated Cornell University just in 2023, but she's already focused on becoming a monumental mentor, from her work in real estate investments, to helping build The Trotter Project's alumni programming. Learn more about Emily's story below!

Just a year out of school, Emily Yee’s wisdom and care for others is already incredibly seasoned, just like her favorite New York bites. Emily has taken a unique path with her hospitality background and schooling, applying her client-facing skills and detail orientation to a career in real estate. Emily is also an incredible advocate for those with disabilities, and began her work within this field while attending Cornell University. Read and watch more of Emily’s story below—including an exciting update on The Trotter Project’s initiatives for 2025!

Watch Emily Yee's story here.

It's so nice to meet you, Emily! Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us today. Can you tell us a little bit more about your background? How did you first get excited about the hospitality industry? 

My first visit to the hospitality industry was through my grandpa. He owned a number of Chinese restaurants in California and I remember just going as a little girl. I would spend most of my birthdays there and then also larger family celebrations, like Chinese New Year.

We would all gather there, and I just remember running around the kitchen, annoying serving staff and that was my first moment thinking, “This is hospitality.” He was such a warm figure within the community—he had his restaurant in Orange County and some of the frequent guests became our friends—it really was such a great gathering place.

Then from there, I definitely knew this was the industry that I wanted to spend more time in. I started working at a bakery when I was 14, which some people were like, “Oh maybe you shouldn't spend too much time being unpaid labor,” but it was like my summer camp.

I wanted to bake, I wanted to greet people. And that translated to being involved in, not only bakeries, but working at a hotel as a server and hostess in Redondo Beach. I realized I love client-facing work. I decided to go to Cornell University's hotel school to major in hotel administration, which drew me there for their motto, “Life is service.”That’s the spirit of the hospitality program at Cornell. 

Love this background! Again, you grew up in restaurants and hotels, you understand what hospitality is like. What made you choose Cornell and its hotel college? 

I think that the motto “Life is service” really resonated with me and my previous experiences, and how I viewed the hospitality industry being a community where food and people are brought together. What I was really drawn into was you have an education that's put through the lens of hospitality.

We had food operations classes, along with hotel operations classes where you actually have a practicum and spend the whole day working in housekeeping. And our culinary classes where you learn the basics of cuisine and food costing, how to mitigate food waste, proper cleanup, disposals, and food safety management. All those skills culminated to one of my favorite memories: You learn to run a student-led restaurant for one night.

We came up with the concept for the menu, the food cost, did all the seating charts and everything, invited our friends and family and peers to come to support us as essentially the staff working the bar or working in the kitchen. And that was your one night to shine, to put together everything that you've learned within hospitality and put that knowledge to work.

I really resonated with that educational background. It's a very small classroom setting where you know your peers and you work in a lot of team and collaborative environments and projects throughout the entire program.

You also get this experience to be very close to your professors. I have a number of professors that I'm still in contact with and also really helped me decide where I wanted my career to go.

So your capstone was like “Top Chef" Restaurant Wars. Yes, exactly. We did a bento box-themed menu—it was katsu chicken and everything was shaped really cute—the rice was in a little bear shape for Cornell. 

At Cornell, it sounds like you started a DEI initiative while you were there—tell us more about that.  

When I was growing up, I was born with hearing loss. I had to go through speech therapy programs to come to where I am today with my pronunciation and ability to speak very clearly.

For my education, it was really difficult when I was in loud settings to catch what teachers were saying or making sure that I was understanding and getting all the necessary information. I really had to come into my own and learn how to advocate for myself in an educational setting.

Sometimes that would be putting myself in more uncomfortable situations, where you would sit directly in the front of the classroom. I would have to arrange meetings with my teachers after classes, just to make sure I caught things. I had to really work on my own note-taking skills.

I also had a hearing aid, which really helped. All of those things brought me to where I am today, which is where I feel very confident advocating for myself and my needs in a work setting, but I realized how difficult that process would be.

And so at Cornell, I was definitely looking for a group that had a similar interest in disability advocacy and wanting to have that shared experience. We then started the Disability Advocacy Union at Cornell. We started from the ground up and we were over 70 members when I graduated a year ago.

We hosted a disability advocacy intersection panel with mental health, as well. That was really a huge part of my Cornell experience.

Where does the organization stand today and how is Cornell taking it forward after you've graduated?  

We worked a lot with the student disability services at Cornell, just making sure we put in a number of suggestions. At our more grassroots stage, we were getting survey feedback of what students were needing, how they felt like they could be better served to get the accommodations they need, whether that may be extra time or special note-taking assistance, or getting seating guaranteed in the front of the classroom.

We were really focused on working with students to see the best process to fulfill what would be best for their education. The club is still working towards a number of things, as some of the processes are a little slower and they're constantly changing.

When I first started, you were assigned a specific person to help you, which I think was great. But they made it more of a generalist program now. So we're seeing that maybe that'll be better to help with bandwidth capacity, but then maybe there's a lack of personalization that students really crave and need. It's just important to test out different actions, but also see where there's always room to improve. 

Clearly you're someone who has a huge heart and you love helping others. It's why you love hospitality. It's why you love advocating for other people. Tell us where it's brought you today.

So Cornell's hotel school also houses the real estate department, a really great program that teaches you basic real estate principles, but then you can get a little more specific while you're going through what classes to take.

I took sustainable real estate, asset management, sustainable development, and all these other classes. I realized I really do love real estate just because it is similar to hospitality, a place that you can tie to specific experiences, like each asset is also very unique within hotels.

I was really interested in pursuing that as real estate's also very people oriented, very client facing. Now that I'm officially a young professional in real estate, you do realize everyone knows everyone or is one point away from knowing someone. I think that is a very unique profession to be in.

I joined PJT Partners Park Hill, which is a boutique investment bank, but I sit within the real estate arm as a placement agent. I help real estate funds and real estate companies raise money. Within our company, we have the project management side, in which we're constantly talking to our clients like the real estate companies. And then we also have a different arm of our company that speaks to institutional investors, like the Cornell Endowment, for example, or pension funds. And we hear what they're looking for within the real estate market, and then also try to pair them with what our clients are selling.

So if they're interested in a real estate strategy within hospitality, then we'll go to all the investors that we know and filter through based on what they're looking for to make a capital match. 

So you're still continuously using everything you've learned. It's just in this new type of environment. Let's take it back a couple of years. How did you first get involved with the Trotter Project? How did you hear about the Homaro Cantu scholarship and what really made you excited about it?

I first heard about it in high school. I think I stumbled upon it serendipitously when I was looking at communities that I can join that really centered around hospitality and food, and I was looking at how I could continue this next step and find my community.

Luckily, I applied and I found out that I was a scholar, which was quite an exciting time. In my freshman year, we had the Pursuit of Excellence Gala that I was able to fly in to Chicago for, meet The Trotter Project team and also meet fellow scholars, and that has been one of my favorite moments within my Trotter Project experience. We were able to meet the chefs that everyone's brought together, everything that Chef Trotter stands for within the community, and to hear the initiatives that they're doing within food education and supporting other people like me and our educational journeys, in many ways other than financially.

Having that kind of outreach and contact from the team was super, super cool. I actually reconnected with Derrek Miller recently just because I had this idea where I really wanted to give back the same way that I feel like The Trotter Project has given me so much. So I said I was really interested in getting involved with mentorship in any capacity.

I know I'm not directly in hospitality, but to the extent that any scholar may be interested in learning more about Cornell’s hotel programming, different ways to get involved within hospitality once you graduate, or may have shared interests in real estate, I would love to be of help.

It was very timely. We're actually thinking about launching an alumni program. And from there we've been in close contact. 

Talk to us more about that! This alumni network and programming that we want to be getting in place for The Trotter Project, it's definitely a huge initiative that we really want to launch in 2025. What have the strategy conversations been like so far? What are the goals and the vision that you all are putting together on this side of our business so that alumni of The Trotter Project scholarship program can connect?

Very exciting things are happening and hopefully launching in 2025! I think scholars all around The Trotter Project, but also partners of The Trotter Project that have invested in the organization itself, want to be connected and brought together in a more formal way.

I think a lot of feedback on our program that the The Trotter Project is actively listening to is, “How do we come together?” And it's all of shared interest. So the process has been very collaborative. We've at least started with the initial proposal where we have the programming that we want in place, where we see points of growth, and the steps that we can take to make this a bigger program, but we're starting initially very small to focus on the immediate needs, which is pairing scholars amongst partners or amongst each other and mentorship groups, and then thinking about different events that they can come together in helping scholars with their careers and what those services may look like. We’re working together to create a common space where it'll be easy to sift through all the contexts of all the people involved with The Trotter Project to meet up easily, essentially.

I can't wait for 10 years from now when we'll be talking about what a success the mentorship program has been! So speaking about the future, is there anything that you're excited about or any dreams that you want to share with us? 

I'm really excited that this is my first year post-grad in New York, and I'm just looking forward to progressing in my current career. I think the first year is learning the ropes, but then the following year I'm in this position where now I have more junior people joining the company and I get to be in a role where I can teach everything that I've learned to foster their own learning, but also take on more responsibility, whether that means managing my own projects or leading calls. 

And as you're mentoring other people, what's a great piece of advice that you like to give others who are looking to get into the hospitality industry or just starting their careers? 

I would say the biggest advice I have is really don't be afraid to reach out. A lot of the things and opportunities that I've gotten or experienced were just because I picked up the phone, looked up people online, made cold calls, cold emails, and I was really interested, asking if they had time to talk or if there was some way I could help.

Most people are more than happy to jump on the phone for quick calls and help you in the ways they can because if you show that you're interested and motivated, people are really excited for you. 

You don't know anything until you ask and you don't know what you like until you try it, right? Exactly, and I think we'll never know, so we've got to keep on trying new things and seeing where it'll take you.

Thanks for taking the time to tell us your story, Emily, and we can’t wait for the launch of our alumni program! To support our scholarships and other programming, be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date and check out our donation page here!