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Howard Schultz
Chairman of Starbucks
November 4th
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Howard Schultz, Chairman of Starbucks, embodies compassionate capitalism. He is innovative, driven and has successfully turned six coffee bean stores into a billion dollar corporation, but he retains his strong sense of social responsibility. While debates over healthcare rage across the United States, Starbucks has emerged as the first major company to offer health insurance to part-time workers. For Schultz, protecting his employees remains a top priority. As Chairman, he has built a company that now spends more on health insurance than on coffee beans (in excess of $300 million annually).
Raised in Brooklyn, Schultz was the first of his family to graduate from college, earning a football scholarship to Northern Michigan University. After stints at Xerox and Hammarplast, he joined Starbucks as director of marketing and operations in 1982. However, he soon left to find another enterprise, Il Giornale Coffee Company, which he managed until 1985. Two years later he returned to buy Starbucks outright and despite initial opposition, he successfully completed the sale in August of 1987. While opening a Starbucks on every corner may have at one time seemed an impossible dream, the company now boasts more than 15,000 stores operating in 40 countries around the world. With more than 200,000 employees, Starbucks serves an astounding 50 million customers a week. Yet Schultz's relentless effort to bring a social conscience to commerce means that Starbucks is about more than coffee, it's a community.
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Barry Diller
Chairman and CEO IAC
November 11th
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Barry Diller is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of IAC/InterActiveCorp. and Chairman of Expedia, Inc. His internet corporations embody every aspect of the communication world in a host of separate, successful brands such as Ticketmaster, Lending Tree, Match.com, Citysearch and Ask.com. Growing up in Beverly Hills with Hollywood in his back yard it's little wonder he started his career in entertainment. Diller dropped out of UCLA after only one week to work in the mailroom of William Morris. Diller learned the entertainment business through the guidance of his mentors and literally reading the incoming mail for the entire company.
In 1966, he joined ABC and was promoted to vice president in charge of feature films and program development. He created the Movie of the Week, producing 90-minute feature films exclusively for television. In 1974 he took the helm at Paramount Pictures serving as Chairman and CEO for 10 years. In 1984 Diller became the Chairman and CEO of FOX Inc. where he continued churning out hits like The Simpsons, one of television's longest running successful shows.
In 1992 Diller did not leave the entertainment industry but explored a different branch of the communications world by trusting his instincts and purchasing a $25 million dollar stake in QVC. In 1995 he resigned at QVC to accept the job as Chairman and CEO of Silver King Communications. He promptly merged the company with the Home Shopping Network and Savoy Pictures Entertainment, renaming it HSN Inc. While he modestly claims he has been "making it up as he goes along," Diller has succeeded in building IAC into a model of strategic innovation.
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Ann Moore
Chairman and CEO Time Inc.
November 18th
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Ann Moore did not follow the traditional path to Wall Street after graduating from Harvard Business School in 1978. Instead she shocked everyone and accepted the lowest job offer on the table at Time Inc. as a financial analyst. Today she is the chairman and CEO of Time Inc., overseeing a global magazine empire that publishes approximately 150 titles read by more than 300 million people a month, and which account for nearly a quarter of the total advertising revenues of all U.S. consumer magazines.
The McLean, VA native was determined to go to a co-ed University, graduating from Vanderbilt University in 1971. After working at Houghton Mifflin, Moore was inspired by the head of the art and production department to attend business school and soon found herself at HBS, one of just eight female students in the entire class. In 1983, five years after graduating and joining Time Inc., she landed her dream job at Sports Illustrated as General Manager. There, she learned the basics of running a magazine operation, and was rewarded for her efforts when she was named president of People Magazine in 1993. During her tenure at People she transformed the dynamic genre of the 'personality' magazine and tripled the profits of what was already the most profitable weekly publication in the country. Among her numerous honors and awards she holds a place on Fortune’s list of “The 50 Most Powerful Women in American Business."
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Donald Trump
Chairman & President, The Trump Organization
November 25th
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Make no mistake; Donald J. Trump is larger than life. Amassing a billion dollar real estate empire in the 1980s is testament enough to his business acumen and singular ambition, but after nearly losing all he had achieved in the 1989 market crash, Trump persevered and reemerged as the very face of modern American enterprise.
A Queens, NY native, Trump graduated from Wharton in 1968, but actually began his career in college, when he closed his first deal making a $6 million profit. He joined his father’s family real estate business and went on to build his own company into a real estate behemoth, successfully developing some of the most prestigious properties in the world. As the CEO of Trump Organization, he has expanded his reach with office towers, hotels and casinos, golf clubs, resorts and other holdings around the globe. Not content to confine his attention to real estate alone, Trump has also deftly managed his own public persona throughout his career and created a brand unto himself. The Executive Producer and host of "The Apprentice", a best selling author, a one-time Presidential candidate and now founder of an online University, he has succeeded where so many before him have failed. Donald Trump offers a new spin on the classic Horatio Alger tale: from riches to near bankruptcy and then back to even greater riches, and a pop culture status that, taken together, are without parallel. One suspects "The Donald" wouldn't have it any other way.
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Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough:
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes