Barry S Sternlicht

Barry Sternlicht made a fortune building Starwood Hotels and Resorts, which birthed successful brands like W Hotels. Sternlicht stepped down as Starwood’s executive chairman in 2005, after years of often clashing with the company’s other top executives. A decade later, Marriott bought Starwood after a fierce bidding war with a Chinese insurance firm. His current hotel company is SH Hotels & Resorts, and in 2025 will take on the Starwood name once again. Sternlicht is Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Starwood Capital Group, the private investment firm he formed in 1991 that is focused on global real estate, hotel management, oil and gas, energy infrastructure and securities trading. Mr. Sternlicht also serves as Chairman of Starwood Property Trust, the largest commercial mortgage REIT in the U.S. (NYSE: STWD); Starwood Waypoint Residential Trust (NYSE: SWAY), one of the largest publicly traded investors, owners and operators of single-family homes in the U.S.; TRI Pointe Homes (NYSE: TPH), one of the U.S.’s largest homebuilders; hotel operator Société du Louvre; and crystal maker Baccarat S.A. For the past 23 years, Mr. Sternlicht has structured investments with an asset value of approximately $55 billion. Starwood Capital’s funds have invested in approximately 71,000 multifamily/condo units, 2,200 hotels, 48 million square feet of office properties, 40 million square feet of retail and 49,000 lots of land in residential subdivisions. The Firm currently manages approximately $38 billion of assets on behalf of its high net worth and institutional partners. Starwood Capital encompasses approximately 580 employees, plus 470 employees in its loan servicing business. The Firm maintains offices in Greenwich (headquarters), Atlanta, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami, and affiliated offices in London, Luxembourg, Paris, Frankfurt and Sao Paulo. From 1995 through early 2005, Mr. Sternlicht was Chairman and CEO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide (NYSE: HOT), a company he founded in 1995. During his tenure, he built Starwood Hotels into one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world, employing more than 120,000 people with 895 properties in 100 countries. Starwood Hotels is a fully integrated owner, operator and franchiser of hotels. Mr. Sternlicht created W Hotels, perhaps the world’s most successful “boutique” brand, and built the St. Regis Hotels brand from a single hotel to a global brand. Mr. Sternlicht is a trustee of his alma mater, Brown University. He is also on the Board of Directors of The Estée Lauder Companies, the Pension Real Estate Association (PREA) and the Real Estate Roundtable. Additionally, he serves as Chairman of the Board of The Robin Hood Foundation, and is on the board of the Dreamland Film & Performing Arts Center and the Executive Advisory Board of Americans for the Arts. He is a member of the World Presidents Organization and the Urban Land Institute. Barry Sternlicht received his BA, magna cum laude, with honors from Brown University. He later earned an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School.