Susan (Lee) Furbay ‘96

Susan (Lee) Furbay ‘96, Vice President of HVS, shares with us what it means to her to be a Hotelie for Life^®.

“There are about half-dozen days in my life I will never forget: the day I immigrated from South Korea to the US, my wedding day, the days when our daughter and son were born and the day I received my acceptance letter from the Cornell Hotel School. For many, colleges are an extension of higher education where after graduation you attend homecoming for the first few years and then you receive requests for alumni donations in the mail. For me, what Cornell Hotel School has allowed for, with respect to my career, has been a wonderful blessing that is a part of me every day of my life. Over the last 22 years, my career has always been in the hotel industry in some form or another. Whether working as a broker at Eastdil specializing in hotel asset sales (where I met my husband while I was giving a hotel tour in NYC), or originating hotel loans at GE Capital, or in business development at HVS, I have constantly been in trenches with the fundamentals of the hotel economics, its people and the beauty of its real estate. Between my husband, Troy Furbay, who is the Chief Investment Officer at DiamondRock Hospitality, and me at HVS, our family is ‘long’ in the hotel industry. But we love what we do and, most importantly, the people we interact with every day. Even our eighth-grade daughter, Kaitlyn, has an eye on attending the Cornell in the future. I am so grateful to be a Hotelie and will continue to participate in alumni events, support the recent graduates and promote the Hotel School for its success and sustainability.”