From Spring Trek to Italian Citizenship: A Baker Program Student’s Journey
Louis Guzzo, MPS ’23, posing at Castello di Brolio—the family home of the Baron Francesco Ricasoli, who owns Ricasoli Winery, founded in 1141—during the Family Businesses in Italy trek in 2022.
Arriving in a new country, there is always a great deal to see, absorb, and marvel over. In April 2022, when Louis Guzzo, MPS ’23 first set foot in Italy to join the Family Businesses in Italy trek organized by the Smith Family Business Initiative (SFBI) at Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business, his attention was drawn to the people. Being of Italian descent, he felt an immediate bond with them and with the land itself. This was his other home, he realized—a place he’d felt connected to even without ever having visited. He sensed that this trip marked the beginning of something meaningful. Three years later, Guzzo was holding an Italian passport.
Early Exposures to Real Estate
From a young age, Guzzo, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, knew he wanted to run his own business. At 10 years old, he started working for his grandfather, who had built a thriving real estate business that constructed more than 2,500 homes in Cleveland over a career of more than 50 years. Guzzo’s first job was picking up garbage on a construction site. At 14, he started bussing tables at a restaurant. Throughout high school, he always had two or three jobs. In college, he graduated a year early and joined a management training program at Sherwin-Williams, where he landed an IT position.
In the meantime, he obtained a real estate license. He sold a few homes and started a company with the intention of buying rental properties, but at the time, he said, he didn’t have enough confidence in himself to move forward with the plan. Instead, an opportunity arose, and he contracted for a friend’s boutique consulting firm in Chicago, Illinois, to manage large software implementations.
Discovering a Path Forward through the Baker Program
When COVID-19 hit in 2020, the client he was working with at his friend’s company had to pause all operations. For the first time since he was 10, Guzzo wasn’t working. He went on a long road trip, traveling 8,500 miles across the United States in 25 days. It was a time to be introspective and reflect on what he really wanted to pursue in life—on what made him happy. Somewhere along his travels, the answer came to him: He wanted to be in the hospitality and real estate industry. All his life, he’d had a connection to it, and it was his dream to own a hotel one day—but he needed more knowledge and experience. Once the calling became clear, Guzzo applied to Cornell’s Baker Program in Real Estate, housed in the Paul Rubacha Department of Real Estate and jointly managed by the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning and the SC Johnson College. “Cornell is the best of the best,” said Guzzo. “It’s the No. 1 for hotel studies in the world.” He was ecstatic when he received his acceptance letter.
In 2021, Guzzo started at Cornell, focusing on hospitality development. Through the Baker Program, he secured his current position as vice president of strategy and operations at Rockbridge, a hospitality investment firm in Columbus, Ohio. But he took away much more from his time at Cornell. Unexpectedly, he was given an opportunity to trace his Italian roots and uncover a part of his identity.
An Opportunity to Learn and Connect with His Italian Heritage
Guzzo grew up close to his father’s side of the family and had a strong Italian influence. His great-grandparents had immigrated from Italy, and he was always interested in his genealogy. He had long wanted to travel to Italy. In fall 2021, during his first semester at Cornell, he learned of the SFBI’s Family Businesses in Italy trek that was to take place during spring break, led by Daniel “Dann” Van Der Vliet, John and Dyan Smith Executive Director of Family Business. Guzzo seized the opportunity. Not only would he get a chance to visit family businesses and meet executives; he was finally going to see the country himself.
Guzzo vividly remembers the trek, which commenced in Florence and concluded in Rome. They visited Castello Banfi in the Brunello region of Tuscany and met with Cristina Mariani-May, CEO and president of Banfi Vintners, and her father, John Mariani ’54, chairman emeritus. They met with Robert Wirth ’75, at the time owner and managing director of the Hassler Hotel in Rome, and others. The trek ended with an unexpected opportunity to speak on a panel at the Cornell Hotel Society’s European, Middle East, and Africa regional meeting in Rome. Guzzo ended the trek feeling empowered to achieve anything he wanted.
Since then, he has spent more than three months in Italy, much of it in Sicily, where three of his four Italian great-grandparents were from. In particular, he has spent time in the small town of Cefalù. A few days into his first visit there, Guzzo had already made friends that felt like family. One of these days, he hopes he will start a hotel business in Sicily and pursue his love for hospitality in a place that he has quickly come to love.
Navigating the Path to Dual Citizenship and Opening Future Possibilities
In March, over three years after he started work on his application for Italian birthright citizenship, Guzzo received his Italian passport. The process had been riddled with hurdles. Birth certificates and old documents from three generations ago had to be unearthed, and many requirements had to be met. He hired a lawyer who argued his case for him in court. Guzzo had started the process before he had even set foot in Italy, but it was his first experience in the country that solidified his determination to see the process through to its end.
“There was something that came over me,” said Guzzo, speaking about his experience on the Family Businesses in Italy trek, “and even though I couldn’t speak the language, and there were all these reasons to be anxious, I just felt like it was everything that I wanted it to be and more. I’m so glad that I got to experience it with Dann and Erin and the SFBI team.”
Acquiring Italian citizenship is, for Guzzo, a deeply personal achievement. It grants him the freedom to come and go as he pleases, and it paves the way for launching his dream hotel business as a local entrepreneur. But more than that, it’s validation of his Italian heritage and a strengthening of his bond to the country. “People do crazy things for love,” said Guzzo, “and Italy is my love.” In celebration of his new dual citizenship, Guzzo bought a cup of Illy espresso in the building that houses the Consulate of Italy in Detroit.
Three years ago, the moment he stepped out of the airport in Milan on his first trip to the country, Guzzo had bent down and touched the ground. He was really there, in Italy. And at that moment, he knew that this was going to be the start of a very special journey.
