Nicole Beamon ‘26 - Philippus Miller III ‘83 Hotelie for Life® Prize Winner

In 2020, the Cornell Hotel Society (CHS) Hotelie for Life^® Senior Prize was named in memory of Philippus Miller ’83, longtime director of alumni affairs at The Hotel School (SHA) and founder of the executive search firm Philippus Miller III and Associates. Phil was famously known for facilitating relationships among Hotel School students, faculty, and alumni. He was the consummate Hotelie - a people-person dedicated to serving others.

The winner of the 2026 Hotelie for Life^® Senior Prize award is Nicole Beamon ‘26.

Nicole cannot think of a time during her life when she did not have a deep passion for the hospitality industry.  As early as age four, Nicole was binging on the Food Network and enjoying eating out at family-restaurant chains with her family in Baltimore.

Naturally, when looking at colleges during her freshman year of high school, Nicole wanted to go to culinary school.  However, her father was skeptical about the return on investment.  He was the one who encouraged Nicole to pursue a four-year hospitality program.  During that investigation, Nicole discovered Cornell’s Hotel School.

Shortly after arriving at Cornell, Nicole’s love for hospitality was confirmed.  Every student she encountered was so passionate about their respective segments of the industry.

During her student orientation session, Nicole vividly remembers Richy Petrina’s ’01 presentation about his career in the beverage industry.  She immediately sought Richy, and he became one of her first mentors at Cornell.

Richy first introduced Nicole to Professor Cheryl Stanley ’00, which eventually led to a relationship with multiple food and beverage faculty members.  Professor Doug Miller introduced Nicole to beer, mixology, and culinary.  Simultaneously, Professor Lilly Jan exposed Nicole to the humanity of food.  Yet, it was Professor Stanley herself who inspired her love of hospitality education as a whole.

It was through each of these Professor’s classes that she also solidified her passion for the F&B community.  One class conversation could range from recipe ideas, wine pairings, to restaurant light fixtures.  This ability to converse and bond about all things hospitality – the good and the bad - is one of the things that kept her love for the industry alive.

Nicole is intrigued by the relationship between food and culture, especially in disadvantaged American subcultures and non-Western populations around the world.  Accordingly, Nicole has sought a variety of humanities courses on the Cornell campus outside of Statler.

Consistent with her affection for global cultures, Nicole spent the fall semester of her senior year in Japan at a Doshisha University-sponsored program.  With the assistance and approval of professors in both Ithaca and Kyoto, Nicole developed her own independent study program.  She spent the semester studying how Japanese whisky has been able to penetrate the global beverage market as a non-Western entity.  For her research, Nicole used conversational Japanese to interview workers in liquor stores, bars, and clubs throughout the country. She even visited Japan’s oldest distillery – Yamazaki – to talk about Japanese whisky with both foreign and domestic visitors.

The mentorship she has received at the Hotel School, her passion for research, and her interests in Food-based humanities had inspired Nicole to think about how she wanted to truly impact the world.  After a few years of operations, Nicole hopes to further her education in order to become a professor in food studies or hospitality.

Nicole is very active at Cornell outside of the Hotel School curriculum.  She has held multiple positions in the Statler Hotel, including line cook and wine attendant at Banfi, and a server at the Regent Lounge.  Consistent with her interest in the humanities and social justice, Nicole was the Executive Director of “A Seat at the Table.”  As Cornell’s first and only business ethics student organization, the club focuses on the social impact of the decisions made by business professionals.  Other organizations that Nicole is involved in are the Black Women’s Support Network, the National Society of Minorities in Hospitality, and Hotel Ezra Cornell. Back home in Baltimore, Nicole continues to mentor middle school students on the possibility of higher education.

Summers have allowed time for Nicole to get exposure to a variety of food and beverage jobs.  Nicole met Alice Navadeh with Rethink Food during HEC.  Rethink Food is a NYC-based non-profit built to address the city’s food waste and food scarcity problem by repurposing surplus restaurant inventory.  This interaction eventually led to an internship the summer after her freshman year.  While working on a collab project at Rethink, Nicole learned about the employee-first culture at Union Square Hospitality.  That introduction led to internships during the summers after her sophomore (Porchlight Bar) and junior (Beverage Operations) years.  After two successful internships, Nicole will be working for Union Square Hospitality following her graduation in May 2026.

For Nicole, her love of everything she has done on the Cornell campus, along with the passion and drive of everyone within the Hotel School, influences her definition of Hotelie for Life^®.

Winning the Phil Miller Hotelie for Life^® award has been surreal for Nicole.  She is happy that she now has the opportunity to tell her story to others. As somebody who grew up mostly witnessing hospitality through a TV screen, the Hotelie community has allowed her to truly appreciate her talents, her passions, and her future.  “People like me can be themselves and not have to change.  I have always received support from the school to do what I want.”

Additional 2026 Hotelie for Life^® Finalists

The following members of the Cornell University Nolan School of Hotel Administration class of 2026 were selected as finalists for the Hotelie for Life^® Senior Prize.  Nicole and the four other finalists all received lifetime memberships to the Cornell Hotel Society.

 ·         Will Aepelbacher

·         Théo Belin

·         Matthew Merrill

·         Samantha Salto

The Cornell Hotel Society and Cornell Hotel Foundation congratulate Nicole and all the award finalists, and wish them the best of success on their journeys as a Hotelie for Life^®. This interview was conducted by Robert Mandelbaum ’81.