Michael is leading the Apara Hotel Design and Project Management Group with field experts including all design disciplines required to put a quality hotel together.With his extensive experience in overseeing all aspects of the complexity of hotel projects from initial design planning through opening and post-opening he is able to pass his knowledge of ‘what to do’ and, equally important, ‘what not to do’ in hotel investment and construction.

Prior to Apara, Michael was with Marriott over 26 years where he formed and led, Global Design Asia Pacific at Marriott International. Under his leadership at Marriott, he and his team opened over 1,000 hotels and worked on more than 700 hotels in the pipeline in Asia Pacific across 23 countries.

Michael is a Registered Architect of State of Maryland in the United States and a member of American Institute of Architects and holds a BA from the University of Houston undergraduate architectural program. He also successfully led the Marriott E-Cornell University Certification program for “Hotel Planning the Marriott Way” in 2019 and since 2014, Michael had conducted countless “hotel design and planning 101” lectures throughout Asia to share his expertise and knowledge on hotel design. As part of his passion for learning, he recently completed the MIT program on Artificial Intelligence for Business, Harvard Business School program on Driving Performance and Cornell program on Business Negotiation Skill.