Barry Sternlicht

Barry Sternlicht is the founder, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Starwood Capital Group

Starwood Capital Group

Starwood Capital Group is a private investment firm headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut. The businesses owned by the firm include Starwood Property Trust, Inc., Starwood Energy Group Global, L.L.C., Starwood Real Estate Securities, L.L.C., and SH Group....

, the private investment firm focused on global real estate

Real estate

In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...

, energy, infrastructure and securities trading. He is also Chairman of Starwood Property Trust, now the largest commercial mortgage REIT in the United States traded on the NYSE.

Career

Sternlicht launched Starwood Capital Group

Starwood Capital Group

in 1991 with $52 million. His goal was to buy up multi-family apartment buildings that were being auctioned off in the government’s bailout of the savings and loan crisis. In 1993, Sternlicht sold the portfolio to real estate magnate Sam Zell for more than 20 percent of Zell’s Equity Residential Properties Trust. When Zell took the company public that year, Starwood saw a 100 percent return. Sternlicht later began to purchase hotel sites, focusing on combining his passions of architecture

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

and real estate finance.

Starwood Capital Group

Starwood Capital Group

today ranks as one of the largest and most successful investment firms focused on real estate. For the past twenty years, it has structured investment transactions with an asset value exceeding $40 billion. Starwood's funds have invested in more than 40,000 apartment units, more than 1000 hotels, over 22 million square feet of office properties, 15 million square feet of retail and over 20,000 acres of land in residential subdivisions. Today the firm manages approximately $12 billion of investor capital on behalf of its high net worth and institutional partners.

From 1995 through early 2005, Sternlicht was Chairman and CEO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., a company he founded in 1995. Sternlicht has been credited as a dynamic and innovative hotel leader, creating new products and programs with immediate global appeal. He has been named the King of Hotels , creating W Hotels, perhaps the world’s most successful “boutique” brand. Some of his other innovations include the creation of Westin’s “Heavenly Bed,” “Heavenly Bath,” “Westin Workout,” and Starwood Preferred Guest, the world’s first frequent traveler program with “no blackouts.”

Awards

In 2010, Sternlicht was named Executive of the Year and Investor of the Year by Commercial Property Executive . Global peer-voting polls sponsored by Private Equity Real Estate magazine named Sternlicht as the Global Industry Figure of the Year and as North American Industry Figure of the Year in 2010, his second consecutive year in this category . In 2004, he was named America’s Best Lodging CEO by Institutional Investor magazine. Sternlicht was inducted into the Interior Design Magazine Hall of Fame.

Personal

Sternlicht is a trustee of his alma mater, Brown University

Brown University

Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

. He serves on the Board of Directors of The Estée Lauder Companies, Baccarat Inc., National Golf, Mammoth Mountain, Ellen Tracy, Field & Stream, the International Advisory Board of Eurohypo Bank and Advisory Board of Zelnick Media. He serves as Vice Chairman of Robin Hood and is on the boards of the Pension Real Estate Association (PREA), the Dreamland Community Theatre, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s National Leadership Advocacy Program, and the Business Committee for the Arts.

Sternlicht was born in New York City in 1960 and graduated magna cum laude from Brown University

Brown University

in 1982. He got his MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States and is widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the world. The school offers the world's largest full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, and many executive...

in 1986.