Barry Sternlicht

Barry Sternlicht is the founder, chairman and chief investment officer of JAWS Estates Capital. He serves as an advisor to Cadan. He is Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Starwood Property Trust. Mr. Stern is the founder and serves as Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Starwood Capital Group. Over the past 30 years, Mr. Sternlicht has structured investments with an asset value of more than $195 billion. Starwood Capital funds have invested in approximately 200,000 multifamily/condominiums, 4,000 hotels, 99 million square feet of office property, 56 million square feet of retail property and 50,000 parcels of land in apartment complexes. The firm currently manages about $100 billion in assets on behalf of its wealthy and institutional partners. Starwood Capital, its affiliates and externally managed public companies employ about 4,000 people. The firm has offices in Arlington, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Greenwich, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., as well as branches in Amsterdam, Hong Kong, London, Luxembourg, Sydney and Tokyo. From 1995 to early 2005, Mr. Sternlicht was chairman and chief executive officer of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, which he founded in 1995. During his tenure, he grew Starwood Hotels into one of the world’s leading hotel and entertainment companies, employing more than 120,000 people and operating 895 properties in 100 countries. Mr. Sternlicht created W Hotels, perhaps the world’s most successful “boutique” brand, and transformed the St. Regis Hotels brand from a single hotel into a global brand. In 2008, Mr. Sternlicht founded SH Group, his new hotel management company. SH Group owns and operates Baccarat Hotels & Resorts and the 1 Hotel brand. In 2016, Mr. Sternlicht won the inaugural PERE Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2015, he was named PERE Global Industry Person of the Year, received the Cornell Icon of the Industry Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Hotel Investment Forum. In 2013, Mr. Sternlicht was named the most important person in commercial real estate finance by The Mortgage Observer. In 2010, Mr. Sternlicht was named Commercial Property Executive of the Year and Investor of the Year by Commercial Property Executive. Mr. Sternlicht was also named America’s Best Hospitality Executive by Institutional Investor magazine. He is a member of the Interior Design Magazine Hall of Fame. He has received the Preston Robert Tisch Distinguished Industry Leadership Award from New York University, the CEO Diversity Award from Diversity Best Practices/Business Women’s Network, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Travel Marketing Executives, the Hospitality Heritage Award from the American Hotel and Lodging Association and the Marketer of the Year from Brandweek. Mr. Sternlicht’s humanitarian work has been recognized with prestigious national awards such as the JDRF Man of the Year, the JDRF Live and Give Award and the JDRF Chairman’s Award. Mr. Sternlicht serves on the Board of Directors of The Estee Lauder Companies and the Real Estate Roundtable. In addition, he has previously served as Chairman of the Board and is currently a member of the Robin Hood Foundation Board, as well as serving on the Board of the Dreamland Center for Film and Performing Arts and the Executive Advisory Board of Americans for the Arts. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Foundation, the World Presidents Organization and the Urban Land Institute. Mr. Sternlicht received his bachelor’s degree with honors from Brown University. He later earned an MBA, summa cum laude, from Harvard Business School.