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Howard Schultz
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Howard Schultz (born July 19, 1953) is an American businessman and entrepreneur best known as the chairman and CEO of Starbucks and a former owner of the Seattle SuperSonics. Schultz co-founded Maveron, an investment group, in 1998 with Dan Levitan.
ltz grew up in a subsidized public housing project (Bay View Houses) in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn, New York. He attended Canarsie High School and is the eldest of three children.
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Encyclopedia
Howard Schultz (born July 19, 1953) is an American businessman and entrepreneur best known as the chairman and CEO of Starbucks and a former owner of the Seattle SuperSonics. Schultz co-founded Maveron, an investment group, in 1998 with Dan Levitan.
Early years
Schultz grew up in a subsidized public housing project (Bay View Houses) in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn, New York. He attended Canarsie High School and is the eldest of three children. He has a sister, Ronnie (b. 1956) and a brother Michael (b. 1961), who both live in New York. His mother lives in New Jersey and his father, of whom he often speaks in interviews, is deceased. He is a father of two children and currently lives in Seattle with his wife. He owns an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and a house in East Hampton, N.Y..
Schultz attended Northern Michigan University on a football scholarship. In 1975, he became the first of his family to graduate from college when he earned his bachelor's degree in the arts and sciences. He is a member of the Theta Iota chapter of Tau Kappa Epsilon.
Career
In 1982, he joined Starbucks Coffee Company in Seattle as the Director of Marketing. After a business trip to Milan, Italy, he tried to persuade the owners (including Gerry Baldwin) to offer traditional espresso beverages in addition to the whole bean coffee, leaf teas and spices they had long offered. After a successful pilot of the cafe concept, the owners refused to roll it out company-wide and Howard Schultz started his own coffee shop named Il Giornale in 1985. Two years later, the original Starbucks management decided to focus on Peet's Coffee & Tea and sold its Starbucks retail unit to Schultz and Il Giornale.
Schultz renamed Il Giornale with the Starbucks name and aggressively expanded Starbucks' reach across the United States. It can be said that Starbucks popularized espresso drinks such as the cafe latte to many Americans who had previously only ever tasted freeze dried coffee. Schultz keen insight in real estate and his insatiable appetite for coffee drinks drove him to grow the company rapidly. Schultz didn't believe in franchising, so Starbucks owns every domestic outlet with one exception. Schultz went 50-50 with Magic Johnson on stores in minority communities.
Schultz co-authored a book called Pour Your Heart into It that expounds on his life journey with Starbucks. In his book Schultz admits that he was afraid that "Starbucks may become another souless big chain." This book is also published in Turkish by Babiali Kültür Yayinciligi as Gönlünü Ise Vermek.
Schultz is also the former owner of the NBA's Seattle SuperSonics. On July 17, 2006, it was announced that Schultz sold the team to a group of businessmen from Oklahoma City for $350 million. It was speculated that the new owners would move the team to their city some time after the 2006-2007 NBA season. On July 3, 2008, the City of Seattle reached a settlement with the new ownership group and the Sonics did, in fact, move to Oklahoma City. The Sonics had a 41-year history in Seattle, and the sale of the established franchise to out-of-state owners considerably damaged Schultz' popularity in Seattle. In a local newspaper poll, Schultz was judged "most responsible" for the team leaving the city, winning 42% of the vote. Howard Schultz filed a lawsuit against Sonics chairman Clay Bennett, in April 2008, to rescind the July 2006 sale based on fraud and intentional misrepresentation. However, Schultz dropped the lawsuit in August 2008. When Bennett purchased the Sonics and its sister franchise in the WNBA, the Seattle Storm, for $350 million, he agreed to a stipulation that he would make a "good-faith best effort" for 1 year to keep both teams in Seattle. He has since sold the Storm to four Seattle women who will keep the team in Seattle.
Schultz is also a significant stakeholder in Jamba Juice.
In 2006, Forbes Magazine ranked Schultz as the person in the United States, with a net worth of $1.1 billion dollars.
On January 8, 2008 Howard Schultz regained his status as CEO of Starbucks after a hiatus of 8 years.
Awards
In 1998, Shultz was awarded the "The Israel 50th Anniversary Tribute Award" from the Jerusalem Fund of Aish Ha-Torah for "playing a key role in promoting a close alliance between the United States and Israel".
In 1999, Shultz was awarded the "National Leadership Award" for philanthropic and educational efforts to battle AIDS.
On March 29, 2007, Schultz accepted the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Award for Ethics in Business at the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. The same night, he delivered the Frank Cahill Lecture in Business Ethics.
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