When Katherine Kies was a high school freshman in McLean, Va., she sketched out her future.

First, she would attend Cornell's School of Hotel Administration (SHA). Through classes and summer internships, she would experience every corner of the hospitality industry, from operations management and restaurant distribution systems to culinary arts and pastry making.

After graduation, she would start working her way up in the industry, all the while accumulating experience and saving money toward her ultimate goal: her very own luxury hotel and restaurant in the south of France.

There, she would spend most of her time overseeing the restaurant. As for managing the hotel -- oh, did she mention the future husband? That would be his job.

In the eight years since she formulated it, the plan has undergone a few changes. But now Kies can count the Cornell leg of the journey accomplished --and accomplished with distinction. Kies is the 2011 winner of the SHA's Drown Foundation Prize, awarded annually by the Joseph Drown Foundation to a graduating senior in the school.

The $15,000 prize is the largest monetary award given to an undergraduate. Recipients are chosen by a committee of SHA faculty members. This year's semifinalists were Robert Brewer, Willis Cheng, Annie Mulcahy and Ellie Proctor. Each received $1,000.

Robert White, chef and teaching support specialist, recommended Kies for the award. In his nomination, he cited the "exemplary character and unwavering dedication to excellence which Katherine demonstrates on a daily basis.

"Katherine has always impressed me with her sense of professionalism, never taking shortcuts and always maintaining exceptionally high standards -- essential characteristics for anyone wishing to become an exemplary leader in today's competitive hospitality industry," White wrote. "Katherine's ability to fulfill all of her obligations and meet deadlines regardless of the many distractions and sometimes unavoidable conflicts of college life has made her a dedicated and valuable student member of the food service management laboratory team."

As the winner, Kies will deliver the SHA's commencement address. Then she's off to New York City to work at the restaurant consulting firm Avero, where she'll draw on skills she's developed in classes, internships, as a research assistant -- and most importantly, she said, through work with Hotel Ezra Cornell (HEC).

With increasingly central roles each year at HEC, she said, she learned how to organize large events, manage a diverse team and provide top-notch service.

"It was the hardest thing I've ever done," she said. But the challenge was more than worthwhile, both for the experience itself and for the relationships she built with other participants. "It helped open a lot of other doors," she said.

Kies will donate part of the prize to her high school, which gave her a head start down the career path with a curriculum that included plenty of internship opportunities. The rest will go, she hopes, toward opening her own bakery.

Will she open it in the south of France? Well, maybe. "I would love to," she said. "I don't know if I'll end up there, but I definitely want to live abroad."

And while she's not sure which area of hospitality management she'll end up in, she is sure that it'll be one she likes.

"I love every aspect of it," she said. "I'm really open."