Presenting 2025 Hotelie Hall of Fame Story - Abigail (Spencer) Charpentier '95
An excerpt from Abigail's story...
Abigail Charpentier fell in love with hospitality at a young age, and by sixth grade, she was already dreaming about the Cornell Hotel School. Drawn to hospitality by helping her parents host dinner parties, she saw that bringing people together over a shared meal could build relationships, strengthen conversations with different perspectives, and forge new friendships.
Those early entertaining experiences fostered a fascination in everything from the menu planning and meal preparation to etiquette and protocol designed to welcome people. Her parents also instilled a cultural curiosity in her through their international travels, further fueling her interest in hospitality as she admired and critiqued the different hotels from around the world and imagined herself as the general manager. This interest was nurtured by her father’s colleagues at accounting firm Laventhol & Horwath, many of whom were Cornell Hotel School alumni.