Walter Shorenstein

Walter H. Shorenstein (February 15, 1915 – June 24, 2010) was an American billionaire real estate developer and investor. His company, Shorenstein Properties, owned 130 buildings totaling at least of office space at the time of his death.

Early life Shorenstein was born to a Jewish family in 1915 in Glen Cove, New York, son of a clothier. In 1934, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1941, he enlisted in the United States Air Force. He worked as a commercial real estate broker, becoming a partner at Milton Meyer and Co., a firm he bought in 1960 upon its founder's death and renamed after himself. In honor of his daughter who died of cancer in 1985, Shorenstein founded the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy—renamed the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy in 2014—at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He also endowed the Walter H. Shorenstein Forum for Asia Pacific Studies at Stanford University. In 1993, he and Mikhail Gorbachev established the Gorbachev Foundation in San Francisco.

Family In 1945, Shorenstein married Phyllis Finley of Wellington, Kansas. She met her husband while working as a volunteer ambulance driver at Travis Air Force Base, where Shorenstein was stationed during World War II. Phyllis converted to Judaism. Mrs. Shorenstein had a heart ailment and died in 1994 at the age 76 in San Francisco. They had three children:

Awards and honors 1991: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement 1997: University of Southern California’s Real Estate Hall of Fame 1997: Democratic National Committee’s Lifetime Achievement Award 1998: Bay Area Council’s Business Hall of Fame 2013: Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) establishes the Walter Shorenstein Fellowship in Media and Democracy