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The history of Jyoti Sarolia's family imbues her life. It's the story many immigrants know of coming to America and making a new life. Her regard for that achievement is reflected in the name of her Temecula, California-based company, Ellis Hospitality Group. Part of her family tale even made its way to the Smithsonian Museum. But today, Sarolia, as chief operating officer, is helping Ellis Hospitality move into the future using new technology. It's a future she's making for her daughter, and a story she hopes resonates with other women in every profession. Where it all began Sarolia's family established its foothold in the U.S. in 1952 when her paternal grandfather's brothers, Dhayabhai Patel and Shantibhai Patel, immigrated to this country. Like thousands of others, their first stop was the immigration inspection station on Ellis Island in New York. That inspired the name of Sarolia's new company.Family vacation packages "I felt it was only appropriate to name it after the first chapter of our story, which set the foundation for many generations to come," Sarolia said.

Mit Shah today is CEO of Atlanta-based Noble Investment Group, a multi-million dollar company founded in his lifetime of experience growing up in the hotel business. It's a story he shares with many Indian American hoteliers, but he said it's a story that bears repeating, a story of the American dream. Shah retells his story here for Asian Hospitality's Leadership Series, the first episode for 2024. Along with his family history, he also discussed Nobel's investment practices, the economy in general and lessons learned from hosting interviews with industry leaders for the Bharat Shah Leadership Speaker Series, named after his father, at the Hunter Hotel Conference in Atlanta. "My parents were immigrants to the United States. In the 1960s they came here for a better life and education. As they were doing that, they had friends that found themselves in this industry and buying small properties throughout the country," Shah said, adding that his parents bought their first hotel, the Winkler Motor Inn in Winston Salem, North Carolina in 1979. "I was 10 years old at the time, my younger brother was six years old at the time and that was the family business, a very common story that we hear throughout our industry. It's an important story to continue to tell because it's deeply rooted in the American dream."

THE HISTORY OF Indian immigrants in the U.S. could fill several books, but Mahendra Doshi has captured a core aspect of it with his book "Surat to San Francisco: How the Patels from Gujarat Established the Hotel Business in California 1942-1960." The book is, as the title says, the story of the individuals who first left their home for a roundabout journey to the American Dream. Doshi is journalist in San Jose, California, not a businessman himself, but he is originally from Vadia in the Indian state of Gujarat. His family moved to Calcutta in West Bengal where Doshi earned degrees from Presidency College and the University of Calcutta before moving to the U.S. in 1967 and eventual graduated with a master's degree from the University of Nevada, Reno. "I have never even thought of business. I had a degree in journalism and I did marketing work for General Motors. That's where I made my living for 30 years," Doshi said. "At the same time, I pursued my journalistic impulses. I wrote for mostly all those ethnic papers, Indian ethnic papers like India Times of Chicago and India West and India Post." Doshi also published two "Who's Who among Indians" lists in 1976 and 1981. That whet his appetite for exploring his people's history.