Howard Schultz is an American business magnate

Business magnate

A business magnate, sometimes referred to as a capitalist, czar, mogul, tycoon, baron, oligarch, or industrialist, is an informal term used to refer to an entrepreneur who has reached prominence and derived a notable amount of wealth from a particular industry .-Etymology:The word magnate itself...

. He is the best known as the chairman and CEO of Starbucks

Starbucks

Starbucks Corporation is an international coffee and coffeehouse chain based in Seattle, Washington. Starbucks is the largest coffeehouse company in the world, with 17,009 stores in 55 countries, including over 11,000 in the United States, over 1,000 in Canada, over 700 in the United Kingdom, and...

 and a former owner of the Seattle SuperSonics

Seattle SuperSonics

The Seattle SuperSonics were an American professional basketball team based in Seattle, Washington that played in the Pacific and Northwest Divisions of the National Basketball Association from 1967 until 2008. Following the 2007–08 season, the team relocated to Oklahoma City, and now plays as...

. Schultz co-founded Maveron

Maveron

Maveron is a venture capital firm with offices in Seattle and San Francisco that invests in consumer-focused businesses. The firm was founded by Dan Levitan, a former managing director at Schroder Wertheim & Co., and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz....

, an investment group, in 1998 with Dan Levitan.

In 2006, Forbes

Forbes

Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...

magazine ranked Schultz as the 354th richest person in the United States, with a net worth of $1.1 billion.
Howard Schultz was born to a German-Jewish family on July 19, 1953 in Brooklyn, New York, the son of ex-US Army trooper and then truck driver Fred Schultz, and his wife Elaine.