Playing in Intersections with Cory Van Horn, MAFS ’12
This article was originally published in the Spring 2023 edition of the Chatham Recorder Alumni Magazine by Cara Gillotti. To view more digital Recorder stories, click here.
Montgomery County, Maryland consists of 500 square miles and one million residents. Its cities include Bethesda and Silver Spring. It boasts an exceptionally diverse population (it’s not unusual to walk into a grocery store and hear five different languages spoken), the C&O Canal National Historical Park, and one of the largest privately funded modern and contemporary museums in the country.
Still, due to its proximity to Washington, DC, many visitors on their way to the country’s capital might not think it’s worthy of a look. As Chief Strategy Officer for Visit Montgomery, Maryland, Cory Van Horn, Master of Food Studies ’12, aims to change that.
“My job is to really look at Montgomery County, think about it as a holistic tourism destination, and identify what opportunities we have to continue to help the destination thrive, not only for tourists, but also for residents,” Van Horn says. “That’s things like looking at what new buildings or attractions we could build, what types of events we could bring in, like a marathon or a festival.”
Cory Van Horn, MAFS ’12
Originally from northern Michigan, Van Horn completed his undergraduate degree at Grand Valley State University, where he majored in hospitality and tourism management. “I wanted to be a caterer, but I realized that I liked my nights and weekends too much,” he laughs. An internship with Aramark landed him briefly in their marketing department, and it was a match.
“I liked the fact that marketing allowed me to tap into my creativity, it allowed me to think about intersections, how do I take one element of one thing and another element of another, find the common threads, and create something that is bigger than what anybody else had thought of before.”
Marketing jobs followed in several fields, and it was while working at a tech start-up in Pittsburgh that he found himself flipping through a magazine and saw an ad for the brand-new food studies graduate program at Chatham University. Van Horn immediately emailed the recruiter, and a week later, had lunch with Food Studies Program Director Alice Julier, Ph.D. He was sold. “I was looking at an MBA program, an organizational program, and then the food studies program,” he says.
“What made me decide to move forward with the MAFS was because it wasn’t a repeat of what I already knew. It was going to challenge me and build skillsets in ways that I hadn’t thought of before.”
The Falk School, part 1
“The number one thing that I absolutely loved about that program was how adaptable it was,” says Van Horn. “Dr. Julier was my advisor, and she understood that I was interested in culinary tourism and in sustainable community development, and she helped me craft a program that was tailored to me. Every class had some sort of practical connection that could take the theory that we were learning and apply it to the real world.”
The food studies program, says Van Horn, “made me think about how the intersection of food, history, culture, community development, and tourism all intersect. I like to say that I enjoy playing in intersections, because I was able to take the knowledge that I had—the career knowledge, the experience, and the marketing and business side, and apply it to the sustainability/cultural/community development side and have been able to use the two together to allow me to have a unique skillset that has been very successful for me.”
Food Guy Adventures
While at Chatham, Van Horn launched a walking food tour business called Food Guy Adventures. Food Guy Adventures took participants on tours in upper Lawrenceville and in the Strip District, meeting proprietors and sampling their wares, visiting Asian grocery stores, and in one case, doing a full distillery tour at Wigle Whiskey—“a tour within a tour,” says Van Horn.
“The part that I loved about those tours was that it allowed for a different level of engagement with the community, because unlike a motorcoach tour where you’re looking through glass, watching things whiz by, you’re able to interact with the built environment, see close up the architecture, engage with the local community, and have those one-on-one discussions with the business owners,” says Van Horn.
MoCo Eats
“Because of MoCo’s tremendous diversity, we have over 1,000 restaurants. You can travel the world just through cuisine here. During the pandemic, a key segment that needed a tremendous amount of help were the restaurants. My team and I created the MoCo Eats program that started out as a directory of 800 restaurants to help educate people on what was open, closed, who was offering outdoor dining, and who was offering takeout. We launched it in 48 hours; the fastest program I’ve ever launched. But we wanted to think about it beyond just being a directory. What was the true value of people having the knowledge of what restaurants were available in MoCo? And it was very clear that it was the diversity of the cuisine that was offered. This is a great way of demonstrating how diverse MoCo really is.”
Not only did his experience at Chatham help him start the business—his master’s thesis was called “Bridging the Gap: A Case for Tourism Alliance in Pittsburgh”—but, says Van Horn, “It was easy to say ‘I am an alumnus of Chatham and I want to work with you.’ The relationship allowed me to get in the door.”
The Falk School, part 2
Meanwhile, Van Horn was maintaining ties with the food studies program, teaching the Food Journeys course. “I absolutely loved teaching at Chatham,” he says. “The number one thing I loved was that the students are so knowledgeable and so passionate about what they do and what they care about that it allows me to be challenged and allows me to challenge them.”
Van Horn continues to teach, currently in the hospitality program at Montgomery College, and cherishes his relationships with his students. “The example I give is that I’m in a hotel running to go meet with a stakeholder, and then I hear ‘Professor Van Horn?’ and I turn and there’s a student I just taught in a class standing at the front desk. And I’m like ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so good to see you, how are you doing?’ Those continued connections are what I really appreciate about Chatham. I haven’t spoken to my undergrad professors in 20 years but at Chatham, I still have amazing conversations with Alice and Sally Frey—and it’s been ten years!”
An even bigger pond
After having run Food Guy Adventures for about four years, says Van Horn, “I had reached the point in my personal life and in my career where I realized that I was kind of at the top of my game when it came to Pittsburgh, and it was a turning point for me. I could lean into investing in doing these tours and making it a full-time job, because that was in addition to my full-time job, which was doing marketing for a luxury travel company, or did I want to challenge myself and try to become a bigger fish in an even bigger pond? And so I had the opportunity to work for Visit Montgomery, and that allowed me to challenge myself in the DC market. I was able to take the lessons I learned as an entrepreneur and small business owner and that gave me a language to be able to speak to that type of audience, which helps me today.”
“The number one thing I learned from Chatham that I’m applying today is making sure that I have a keen understanding of what the community is looking for, and that we have a connection to culture, to history, and to each other. That way we don’t implement initiatives that can cause pushback or be detrimental to the city as a whole, because ultimately tourism is not meant to be destructive. It really is meant to be the great communicator—an opportunity for people to exchange ideas.”
“One-third of Montgomery County (MoCo) land is reserved for agricultural use, so there is an agricultural tourism component to what we do. There’s one farm brewery where you can enjoy a pint of beer where the hops were grown on the property, the beer was brewed on the property, and you can drink the beer while watching horses. That is 100% in my wheelhouse, and it makes my job a lot of fun.”
“My long-term goal is to continue to grow my leadership skills, and my ultimate goal is to lead an organization at a CEO or executive director level at a similar entity, whether it’s food or tourism related, over the next few years. The other part of my career is giving back to a younger generation through mentorship.”
“I think about my career as having gone from promoting a product, aka a destination, to developing a product. And that’s always been my goal, and really what my focus at Chatham truly was. So, I’ve kind of come full circle to what I’ve always wanted to do.”
Want to learn more about the Food Studies program at ChathamU? We offer a Master in Food Studies, a MAFS + MBA dual degree, and a major and minor for undergraduates interested in Food Studies, including an integrated undergraduate and master’s degree program.