Mr. Ken Romaniszyn, KH07 (Class of 2005)

President,

Lady M Confections Co., Ltd.

The Kellogg-HKUST EMBA program is proud to recognize Ken Romaniszyn amongst its alumni and celebrate his extraordinary achievements by presenting him a Distinguished Alumni Award.

While growing up in Los Angeles, Ken worked in the Japanese restaurants that his mother operated in LA and Orange County. His mother is Japanese, and his father is an American of Ukrainian descent.

As soon as he received a bachelor’s degree in international economics at UCLA, he immediately headed to the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Beijing’s Foreign Language Institute to study Putonghua.

During this time, he fell in love with Hong Kong. Romaniszyn found his first job working in sports marketing. In 2000, during the internet bubble, he was offered a position taking care of foreign investment banks with CISCO SYSTEMS in Japan. Within 4 years, he was promoted to a regional role based out of Hong Kong.

By 2004, Romaniszyn had been working for a decade and thought it was time for the next step in his career path. He went on to pursue an EMBA at Kellogg-HKUST in 2005. Upon graduating, he continued with CISCO until one of his classmates at Korn Ferry recruited him as a partner to help headhunt for their banking technology practice.

He stayed until 2008 when the finance industry meltdown. 2008 was a tough year for many, including his family friends who were running Lady M. They went bankrupt and had to get rid of all their assets. Because of his mother’s interest in the business, Romaniszyn was tasked to either close Lady M or to revive it.

Romaniszyn thus started his new life as an entrepreneur, and it was time to put all the skills he obtained at Kellogg-HKUST into full effect. With his still-fresh EMBA education, he looked at restructuring the business from various perspectives. He knew he had a good product but needed to market it well. He saw the opportunity and knew what he wanted to do – making a go at this business.

Under Romaniszyn’s leadership, the once distressed New York-based cake boutique has now grown into a multi-million-dollar global operation in the past 10 years.

From one shop in New York, he has expanded the brand to 36 stores as of 2018 (including 11 in the US, 6 in Hong Kong, 4 in Singapore, 10 in China).