GERMANTOWN, Tennessee—McNeill Resort Firm (MHC) and McNeill Funding Group (MIG) introduced the institution of the Mark A. Ricketts Memorial Scholarship at The College of Memphis Kemmons Wilson Faculty of Hospitality & Resort Administration. Born in Arkansas, however raised in Memphis from the age of two, Kemmons Wilson was the founding father of the lodge chain Vacation Inn within the Nineteen Fifties and different enterprise enterprises.
Devoted to the reminiscence of Mark Ricketts, who co-founded McNeill Resort Firm in 2014 with Phillip H. McNeill, Jr., the scholarship will support at the least one undergraduate pupil, starting in 2025, dedicated to a profession in hospitality. Ricketts handed away on November 2, 2022, after a battle with ALS.
Working with the hospitality faculty, the scholarship was established by the efforts of Brent McDowell, MIG government vice chairman, enterprise growth; and Rick West, long-time pal of Mark Ricketts and vice chairman, gross sales/accomplice at hospitality guide Industrial Inexperienced Options.
“Mark was a lifelong accomplice and pal, in addition to an distinctive, inspirational chief. He believed in empowering all individuals in our trade and society. In his reminiscence, we hope this scholarship contributes to the subsequent technology of hospitality leaders,” mentioned Phillip H. McNeill, Jr., government chairman of McNeill Funding Group, LLC and of McNeill Resort Firm, LLC.
“I by no means keep in mind him not being type. Anybody with whom he ever got here in touch was higher for having identified him,” West mentioned. “He could be humbled and thrilled by this scholarship in his reminiscence. He cherished the lodge trade and by no means uninterested in attempting to raised it by a novel mixture of high-level expertise and openness to alter. A tremendous hotelier, however a greater man.”
