Cervantes Lee

Dr. Cervantes Lee has been the Founding Executive Director of the Asia Innovation Hub since August 2024. He leads the "Accelerate to Nasdaq" and "Asia Milestone Makers" programs in collaboration with the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center and Nasdaq, Inc. In this role, Dr. Lee provides board-level mentorship to more than 20 enterprise CEOs across a diverse range of industries.

Dr. Cervantes Lee, affectionately known as the “Panda Professor” at UNLV, is a nationally recognized expert in multi-unit restaurant leadership. He led the authorship of Multi-Unit Restaurant Management, published by Kendall Hunt in February 2025. As an executive coach, Dr. Lee advises a few CEOs of restaurant empires with 5,000 to over 20,000 locations. Dr. Cervantes serves as Faculty Director for Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and teaches MBA courses of Business Planning, Entrepreneurship, and Business Research Methods at Cal Poly Pomona.

Before entering academia in 2021, Dr. Lee spent two decades in principal investment, managing over $100 billion in assets across hospitality real estate, location-based enterprises, and consumer tech. His leadership spans top-tier firms including Beike Holdings (NYSE: BEKE), Redbridge Student House (as CEO, USD 300 million AuM, self-founded, 2015-2019), Panda Express, Peking University Group, CBRE Investors (NYSE: CBRE), AIG Global Real Estate (NYSE: AIG), and Arthur Andersen Global Corporate Finance.

Dr. Lee holds an executive doctorate in restaurant education from the University of Southern California (2021), an M.S. in Real Estate Development from MIT (2008), an MBA in Finance (1999), and a B.A. in Economics (1997) from National Taiwan University.

He served as President of the MIT Club of Southern California from 2018 to 2019 and currently serves as an MIT Educational Counselor (2021-present), recruiting high school applicants in Southern California. In 2014, he became only the second professional to achieve all five designations from the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), a 60,000+ member organization. He was also a faculty member of ICSC University from 2012 to 2015.