Christian started his career as a consultant with Bain & Company after graduating with a Masters in Economics and Econometrics from Edinburgh University. After spending formative years at Bain, Christian was looking for a way to pursue his childhood dream of hospitality. In 2003 he jumped on board with Chip Conley at Joie de Vivre Hotels and began cultivating his development expertise. Christian’s ability to take on complex development projects is made possible by his ability to apply both left-brain and right-brain thinking to every problem, a skillset forged by his German Medical Professor father and a Czech-Venezuelan Painter mother. In his career so far, Christian has been directly involved, and often led, the creation of over 40 independent hotels, and between his private equity experience and hotel investment experience has been instrumental in over $3.5B of investments.

Christian’s continued interest in hotels is driven by the fact that hospitality spaces are spaces you can experience with all your senses and is one of the few industries that encompasses every aspect of business from real estate investment, through design and marketing, all the way to industrial plants in the back of the house departments. Independent hotels require a level of creativity beyond a typical branded hotel and hence provide an opportunity to deliver results through innovation.