Barry Sternlicht

Barry Stuart Sternlicht (born November 27, 1960) is an American billionaire and the co-founder (with Bob Faith), chairman, and CEO of Starwood Capital Group, an investment fund with over $100 billion in assets under management. He is the founder of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide and was its chairman and CEO from 1995 to 2005.

Sternlicht is on the board of directors of the Estée Lauder Companies, The Business Council, the Real Estate Roundtable, the Robin Hood Foundation, Dreamland Community Theatre, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s National Leadership Advocacy Program. RH (company), Invitation Homes, Tri Pointe Homes, and is a past trustee of his alma mater, Brown University.

Sternlicht's style has been described as "intense and impetuous."

Early life Sternlicht was born in New York City in 1960 His father, Maurycy “Mark” Sternlicht, was a plant manager and a Jewish Holocaust survivor from Poland. His mother, Harriet, was from New York and worked as a biology teacher and stockbroker. In 1986, he received an MBA (Master of Business Administration) from Harvard Business School.

Career After graduation, he went to work for JMB Realty, a real estate investment company in Chicago. In 1989, at the start of the savings and loan crisis and the early 1990s recession, he was laid off.

In 1991, at the age of 31, with Bob Faith, Sternlicht launched Starwood Capital Group to buy apartment buildings that were being sold by the Resolution Trust Corporation, created by the federal government to hold and liquidate the real estate assets owned by failed banks after the savings and loan crisis. Sternlicht raised $20 million from the families of William Bernard Ziff Jr. and Carter Burden of New York to fund these purchases.

In 1993, Sternlicht contributed the apartment portfolio to Sam Zell's Equity Residential in exchange for a 20% stake in the company.

In 1994, when Sternlicht was 36, his company purchased Westin Hotels & Resorts in a $561 million transaction in partnership with Goldman Sachs. Sternlicht's innovations included W Hotels and the Westin Heavenly Bed. The bed was modeled after the bed in Sternlicht's home.

Sternlicht also makes venture investments out of his family office, JAWS Capital - which has also engaged in three separate SPACs.

Awards In 1998, Sternlicht received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.

In 2004, Sternlicht was named "America’s Best Lodging CEO" by Institutional Investor magazine.

In 2005, Sternlicht was inducted into the Interior Design Magazine Hall of Fame.

In 2010, Commercial Property Executive named Sternlicht "Executive of the Year" and "Investor of the Year".

Personal life Sternlicht met his future wife, Mimi (née Reichert) Sternlicht, while they were both students at Brown University. They divorced in 2016.

In 2016, Sternlicht moved to Florida.

Wealth According to Forbes, Sternlicht has an estimated net worth of $4.4 billion and is ranked 260th on the Forbes 400.

In 2024, Sternlicht stopped his donations to Brown University, his alma mater, after the university agreed to hold a board vote addressing student protestors' desire to divest from companies doing business with Israel in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas and subsequent Israeli military actions in Gaza. He believed the protestors were "ignorant" and also lacked "facts and moral clarity."

Political contributions Sternlicht has historically identified as a Republican, though more recently has characterized his political views as independent.

Sternlicht is a "self-described friend and golf partner" of Donald Trump but was disappointed Trump did not move to the political center as President of the United States. In 2008, Sternlicht donated first to the Hillary Clinton 2008 presidential primary campaign and then to the Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign. In 2016, Sternlicht contributed $125,000 to Right to Rise, the political action committee created to support the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign.

Sternlicht also appears in the directory of Peter Thiel's Dialog organization.