Panther power couple give back, help future leaders get a head start

Alumni Rakesh and Mei Sarna are leaders in the hospitality industry at a global level. Collectively, they've lived in over a dozen countries and worked at top organizations, including Hyatt Hotels Corporation, Indian Hotels Company Limited and Four Seasons.

After retiring, they didn’t slow down. Instead, they went back to school. At an age when many professionals step away from formal education, the Sarnas enrolled at FIU to earn master’s degrees in global affairs. They weren’t chasing new careers, though. They were pursuing a long-held passion for understanding the forces shaping the world they had spent their lives navigating.

“We’re frustrated geopolitical nerds,” Mei joked. “We spent our careers accommodating and meeting government officials, corporate titans, members of the diplomatic corps and even royalty. It was time to make sense of what is going on in the world with the shifting social and cultural dynamics we witnessed.”

The Sarnas are alumni of the Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs, having earned their Master of Arts in Global Affairs degrees together in 2021. Both had long and successful careers — Rakesh with 38 years of executive experience in global hospitality and Mei with 25 years in the hospitality industry and as a service excellence advisor for hotel and aviation brands. Their shared desire to keep learning brought them to FIU.

“As students new to FIU, we weren’t familiar with the Green School and we were very impressed,” said Rakesh. “We were motivated by the faculty’s enthusiasm, and their knowledge and scholarship inspired us.”

Despite decades of experience engaging with international issues and decision-makers, the Sarnas said the program at FIU helped them better understand the complexities of global affairs in ways they hadn’t before.

“We quickly learned through our Green School courses many very important lessons about what our world is today and what it could be tomorrow,” Rakesh added.

Their decision to pursue graduate education together had been part of their retirement plan. After narrowing their options, they chose FIU’s Green School for its strong international focus and faculty expertise. They even completed their degrees during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, crediting the university’s seamless transition to remote learning.

Supporting students

The couple’s passion for learning turned into something even more powerful: a mission to help others gain access to the same kind of life-changing education. Outside the classroom, the couple’s philanthropic vision took shape as early as 2019. While at FIU, inspired by a panel discussion featuring Richard Haass, president of The Council on Foreign Relations, the Sarnas were struck by the insight and passion of students on the FIU Model UN team. They decided to act.

With a desire to see the next generation of students prosper, the Sarnas established the Rakesh, Mei and Teddy Sarna Model UN Scholarship Endowment, named partly in honor of their beloved golden retriever Teddy. The scholarship support FIU’s talented Model UN students facing financial challenges so that they would have the resources needed to participate, compete and succeed on a global stage. In recognition of their generous gift, the Sarnas have been inducted to the Green School Donor Family Circle.

Rakesh and Mei’s philanthropic contributions have been recognized by FIU’s Torch Awards, which honors FIU alumni who positively impact their profession, community and university.

“We truly appreciate the importance of higher education and try to find ways to support young people who need more resources to achieve their academic goals,” said Mei. “We are thrilled to have our efforts recognized by the Torch Award and believe [that] through our philanthropy and scholarships, we pass the torch to students pursuing their goals.”

“We’re honored that our top Green School alumni Rakesh and Mei’s generosity to support our students is recognized through the FIU Torch Award,” said Green School Dean Shlomi Dinar. “They exemplify what it means to be FIU alumni by exhibiting an understanding that education is what drives change and a passion to create more opportunities for students to enact that change.”

Changing lives through education

The scholarship is part of a broader philanthropic commitment by the Sarnas, who have created and managed several student-focused endowments in the United States. That includes scholarship support of students in FIU’s Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management, from which their daughter earned a degree in 2013. Their motivation, they say, comes from personal experience and the transformative power of education.

“When I was younger and had to relocate to another country to work, I couldn’t afford to study to complete my college degree,” said Rakesh. “Mei and I firmly believe that we must do everything we can to positively impact society through education. If an individual’s lack of financial resources is a barrier, we want to support their quest to pursue higher education.”

Their worldview and philanthropic drive was also shaped by three years spent living in India before retirement. There, they witnessed the connection between poverty and opportunity, and the potential of education to uplift entire families and communities.

“We strongly believe in the role education plays in the advancement of society and are committed to helping young people achieve their academic goals by establishing and managing several scholarship programs for college students,” said Mei.

Now, with their names etched among FIU’s most celebrated alumni, the Sarnas continue to light the way for others by passing the torch, one student at a time.