Skip to Content
MIT News magazine

Stephanie Sonnabend, SM '79

Hotel magnate supports teen philanthropy.

Stephanie Sonnabend, SM ‘79, runs a multimillion-dollar hotel chain, but her latest business venture is a much smaller operation. Recently Sonnabend, who is the president and CEO of Sonesta International Hotels, was inspired by the youth ambassadors concept, as was her high-school-age son. Last year she launched Youth Micro Credit International (YMCI), an organization for high-school students who raise money for microlending projects in developing countries. One of YMCI’s first projects is providing Guatemalan microentrepreneurs with Internet training so they can sell their handicrafts worldwide.

Stephanie Sonnabend, SM ’79, her husband Gregory Ciccolo, and their children Antonia and Nicholas.

“For the cost of an iPod or even a nice pair of jeans, you can transform someone’s life in a developing country,” she says. “This is something I can do–and get my own child very enthused about making a difference in the world.”

One of YMCI’s goals is to help young people learn about finance, credit, and loans. “These are subjects high-school students don’t really know about,” ­Sonnabend says. Her own business education didn’t begin in earnest until she got to grad school. When she earned her undergraduate degree at Harvard, she could take economics but not accounting, and marketing was something done at the grocery store. The MIT Sloan School of Management introduced her to business marketing, helped her look at herself as a leader, and provided an introduction to business technology. “Not that I consider myself a technologist, but I know what questions to ask my IT people, what possibilities exist,” she says.

Sonnabend used these Sloan lessons over the 29 years she has worked her way through the ranks at Sonesta, a family-run business founded by her grandfather. Sonesta operates 27 hotels, resorts, and cruise lines in the United States, St. Maarten, Egypt, Peru, and Brazil. For her business, education, and philanthropic efforts, Sonnabend received the YWCA’s Academy of Women Achievers Award in 2005.

Sonnabend lives in Brookline, MA, with husband Gregory Ciccolo and their son Nicholas, the YMCI activist. Their daughter, Antonia, is in college.

In her community efforts, the big-company CEO echoes the founder of the little organization for students. “My goal in life is to contribute to ­people’s lives,” ­Sonnabend says. “Fortunately, I can do this globally and locally through both Sonesta and YMCI.”

Keep Reading

Most Popular

How Rust went from a side project to the world’s most-loved programming language

For decades, coders wrote critical systems in C and C++. Now they turn to Rust.

The inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it

Exclusive conversations that take us behind the scenes of a cultural phenomenon.

Design thinking was supposed to fix the world. Where did it go wrong?

An approach that promised to democratize design may have done the opposite.

Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death

Can anti-aging breakthroughs add 10 healthy years to the human life span? The CEO of OpenAI is paying to find out.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.