The Unexpected Way MGM Heiress Continues Her Grandfather’s Legacy, Beyond the ‘Glitz and Glamour’ (Exclusive)

Today, Ruby Kemper is a student at Cornell University, who recently proved her chic fashion sense in a custom Chrome Hearts gown at Le Bal des Débutantes on Nov. 29. But one day, the L.A. native may just be following in the big business footsteps of her grandfather, Kirk Kerkorian.

Before his death at age 98 in 2015, Kerkorian was known for building an empire across industries. He made his name in the private investment world and in media after he acquired the film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1969. However, some of his biggest accomplishments happened in the hotel and hospitality space.

Kerkorian opened the world’s then-largest hotel, the International Hotel in Las Vegas, in 1969. Four years later, he bested his own record and opened an even bigger hotel, the first MGM Grand Hotel. He later built a second — and current — iteration of the MGM Grand, which became the world’s largest hotel at the time of its opening in 1993.

At just 20 years old, Kemper is already keen to learn about what went into her maternal grandfather’s work. She’s currently enrolled at Cornell’s famed Nolan School of Hotel Administration, where she’s studying hospitality and business.

The program certainly requires diligent time and effort; it’s not an easy program of study, at least not when compared to the process of collaborating with couture artists to design her dream dress for Le Bal.

But Kemper tells PEOPLE she is delighted to devote her undergraduate life to the family business, and she finds her Cornell courses to be “so interesting.”

“It’s an amazing school. I love what I’m learning,” she says. “It’s very cool, because I get to learn and see the insights of what my grandfather did and how he ran his hotels.”

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She’s intrigued by the “back-of-house operations” behind such accommodations. The intricacies stand out as particularly striking to her since they can differ so greatly from the general guest experience.

“I feel like people only really see the glitz and glamour part [on] the outside. You don’t really know what goes into running a hotel,” Kemper explains. “The core of our world is hospitality.”