founder

Harper has opened or reopened a string of New York rooms over the past decade. The post-COVID reopening of Lucien. Three consecutive Hamptons opening seasons in partnership with Rocco DiSpirito — a market most operators don't try twice. Aves, an Upper West Side Chinese restaurant rebuilt into a neighborhood hotspot in five months, with the wine and beverage program written from scratch. Plus the Grayson Hotel, La Goulue Sur Mer, and currently managing Patina 250.

A stretch of volunteer work with World Central Kitchen in Ukraine sits in there too. He went because he had time, skill, and a reason — and most decent people only have two of the three. The work and the giving aren't separate sides of the practice; they're the same thing applied in different rooms.

Hospitality was part of growing up — rooms where dinner ran late, the conversation was the point, the music was always good. Long before he made a profession of it: a Swiss-Alps boarding school in his teens, a stint at SpaceX in his twenties. As a kid he built computers and ran a neighborhood tech-repair business. The problem-solving brain came first; the rooms came back later.

The rooms ahead — when conditions align — will be built with the same patience that built the brand.