Dr. Cervantes Lee, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Hospitality Business Professor

• Dr. Cervantes Lee serves as Executive Director of Asian Innovation Hub (AIH).
• Dr. Lee is currently a hospitality business professor at the UNLV Lee Business School and an MBA Business Planning instructor at Cal Poly Pomona's College of Business Administration.
• Since Spring 2022, Dr. Lee has been the inaugural faculty member for the multi-unit restaurant management program at the UNLV Hospitality College. This curriculum was made possible by a generous $5 million gift from the co-founding couple of Panda Express. Dr. Lee, affectionately known as the “Panda Professor” at UNLV, teaches related undergraduate, capstone, internship, graduate, and executive courses. In Summer 2024, he further developed a multi-unit restaurant executive course with hosting partners affiliated with Shanghai University, China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), and National Taiwan University. At Cal Poly Pomona, he teaches MBA courses, including Business Planning and Business Research Methods.
• Before transitioning to academia, Dr. Lee accumulated over $100 billion in assets during a 20-year career in principal investment. His experience spans various sectors, including hospitality real estate, location-based businesses (such as schools, hotels, casinos, senior housing, student housing, restaurants, food manufacturing, and transportation), and consumer technologies. His career contributions include roles at Beike Holdings (NYSE: BEKE), Redbridge Student House, Panda Express, Peking University Founder Group, CBRE Investors (NYSE: CBRE), AIG Global Real Estate (NYSE: AIG), and Arthur Andersen’s Corporate Finance.
• In addition to his doctorate in restaurant education from the University of Southern California (2021), Dr. Lee holds an M.S. in Real Estate Development from MIT (2008), an MBA in Finance (2001), and a BA in Economics (1997) from National Taiwan University. He also served as a second lieutenant and transportation officer in the R.O.C (Taiwan) Navy for two years (2001-2003).
• He served as President of the MIT Club of Southern California from 2018 to 2019 and currently serves as an MIT Educational Counselor (2021-2027 term), recruiting high school applicants in Southern California. In 2014, he became only the second professional to achieve all five designations from the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), a 60,000+ member organization. He was also a faculty member of ICSC University from 2012 to 2015. Additionally, he obtained a Certificate in Hotel Real Estate Investments and Asset Management from Cornell University in 2018 and Certification in Hotel Industry Analytics (CHIA) in 2019.