"Conversations with Alumni" - Tiffany Aguiar ’14
Will Aepelbacher, a senior at the Hotel School, recently had the opportunity to interview Tiffany Aguiar ’14, an alumni whose career journey has taken her from hospitality operations to her current role as an Advertising & Brand Protection and Antitrust Associate at Crowell & Moring LLP. While her path may seem like a departure from the hospitality industry, the foundation of service and empathy that she built at Cornell and through her F&B experiences remains at the forefront of everything she does in her legal career.
When Tiffany first entered the Hotel School, she had envisioned a future in F&B management or operations. “I thought I was going to be a restaurant owner,” she recalled, “I even planned to do the dual-degree program with the CIA. Most of my experience was in F&B, and that was the world I knew.” But during her senior year, a social entrepreneurship class changed some of these calculated career plans, instead introducing her to the idea that doing good for others and doing well for yourself could coexist in a career. She wanted to look beyond the hotel school’s service mindset in the F&B space and help others, using the same mindset, but in a broader sense. Motivated by that realization, Tiffany made an unconventional choice to turn down a job offer in the F&B space, instead choosing to work for a nonprofit in Los Angeles recommended to her by a Cornell Alumni. This nonprofit, Bet Tzedek, provided free legal services to low-income residents across the county. She spoke of how this experience taught her how much good work lawyers can do and that “It touched on this idea of not only service in the hospitality aspect, but service in the broader sense of catering to people who need it most.”
That experience became the stepping-stone for her new career path. Tiffany enrolled in law school at UC Irvine, graduating in 2020. During law school, she interned at Crowell & Moring as a Summer Associate, returning as a full-time associate in their Orange County office post-graduation. One of the things that attracted Tiffany to this firm was its commitment to public service. She knew that the firm had high expectations of its attorneys. In fact, it strongly encouraged all attorneys to provide at least 50 hours of pro bono legal services per year. Since her career started at the firm, she has exceeded this expectation and has had the opportunity to help with local cases protecting elders from door-to-door sales scams as well as nationwide lawsuits protecting the Voting Rights Act.
In addition to her robust pro bono practice, she splits her time at the firm between its Advertising & Brand Protection and Antitrust groups, working with clients in FTC and state attorneys general investigations. This work focuses on defending against allegations of deceptive or unfair advertising practices (in the hotel world this might look like pricing tactics such as “Drip Pricing” or algorithmic pricing). Her antitrust practice focuses on representing plaintiffs and defendants in cases related to anticompetitive business practices, such as colluding with competitors to set prices, non-compete employment agreements, and the like.
She gives credit to the Hotel School’s service mindset and passion for helping others for shaping the way she approaches legal work. Tiffany outlined the way in which this idea of “clients” can be transferred to her current role. Her “clients” are no longer hotel guests, but are now the partners she works alongside, and are also external clients she is helping provide legal counsel to. The Nolan experience helped Tiffany build these client relationships and “Think about how you communicate, anticipating their needs in advance, sort of giving them the experience that they don't even know that they are looking for. In addition to giving them a wonderful product.”
Equally important to Tiffany’s story is her ability to lean on the alumni network and willingness to ask for advice along the way. The transition from hospitality to law was a big change, but she was able to lean on others already in the industry within the Cornell network. In response to being asked about this network Tiffany stated that, “It served me well in the legal profession because there's so much I was navigating for the first time, especially being the first lawyer in my family. So being in a program that really teaches you to give back, to give your time, to give your resources, to give your knowledge, it really empowers you. It also, I think, set me up to be in a better position to be someone who's always thinking about, ‘How am I giving back to Junior Associates, how am I not just focusing on myself, but in how others are growing as well.’”
For current students or recent graduates considering a shift, Tiffany encourages reaching out to others in that field. For Hotelies this might look like starting at the Nolan Alumni Directory, but also not limiting yourself to just Nolan and reaching out to alumni of the university as there are thousands of people doing such interesting things. For those interested in the legal field, Tiffany gives some more specific recommendations. She is a “a big proponent of not necessarily going straight through to grad school, especially for law school, as it is a very expensive commitment to try to make. Particularly for those who want to be lawyers, try to work as secretary or another position at a law firm, no matter the size of the firm to expose yourself to the day-to-day life of a lawyer.”
Tiffany’s journey from the Hotel School to antitrust and advertising law may seem unexpected, but the thread connecting each step is service, and how service can be applied to every industry. As was made clear throughout our conversation, hospitality taught Tiffany how to best be of service to others, and law gave her a new way to do it.
