Background

Howard Schultz was born on July 19, 1953, in New York City, New York, the United States, to Elaine and Fred Schultz. Schultz grew up in Canarsie Bayview Houses, federally subsidized housing in Brooklyn. His father, a World War II veteran, had a series of blue-collar jobs, including delivering cloth diapers. Howard has two siblings, Michael and Ronnie.

Education

During his youth, Schultz was ashamed of his family's "working poor" status. He escaped the hot Brooklyn summer one year to attend camp, but would not return when he discovered that it was funded with government money for low-income families.

Schultz was a natural athlete, leading the basketball courts around his home and the football field at school. After graduation from Canarsie High School, where he excelled at sports, he was awarded an athletics scholarship to Northern Michigan University. Schultz earned a degree in communications in 1975 which made him the first person in his family to graduate from college.

Career

Schultz returned to New York after graduation and worked for the Xerox Corporation before joining a Swedish housewares company called Hammerplast. On a business trip to Seattle, Washington, in 1981 Schultz walked into a Starbucks and fell in love with the flavorful coffee. He met with one of the owners, Gerry Baldwin, to sell Hammerplast coffeemakers and expressed an interest in working there. By the following year, Schultz was hired as marketing director for the Seattle business.

Despite the misgivings of his family, Schultz gave up a respectable job in Manhattan to immerse himself in the arcane business of gourmet coffee. He even found himself attracted to the countercultural aura of Seattle that had given birth to the American coffeehouse. Most importantly he had found a business he could be passionate about, and he threw himself into it wholeheartedly.

On a buying trip to Italy in 1983, Schultz's growing obsession with coffee took another step with his discovery of Italian coffee bars, where the experience of enjoying espresso drinks was woven into the fabric of daily business and social life. Schultz thought that the coffee-bar experience could be the next evolutionary step for Starbucks in America; when the founders disagreed, he reluctantly left the company and opened his own Italian-style espresso bars in the Seattle area. He called his new enterprise Il Giornale, Italian for "daily." Three years later, in 1987, Il Giornale was successful enough for Schultz to find investors when the opportunity arose to buy Starbucks from Bowker and Baldwin.

Two years later, with the help of investors, Schultz purchased Starbucks, merging Il Giornale with the Seattle company. Subsequently, he became CEO and chairman of Starbucks (known thereafter as the Starbucks Coffee Company). Schultz had to convince investors that Americans would actually shell out high prices for a beverage that they were used to getting for 50 cents. At the time, most Americans didn't know a high-grade coffee bean from a teaspoon of Nescafé instant coffee. In fact, coffee consumption in the United States had been going down since 1962.

In 1992 he took the company public, and by the end of the decade, Starbucks had 2,500 locations in about a dozen countries. Sales mushroomed from $100 million in 1993 to $465 million in 1995, while new products such as bottled Frappuccino and Starbucks ice cream began appearing on grocery store shelves. As Starbucks introduced new items for coffee drinkers and non-coffee drinkers (such as tea blends, steamed milk, and hot chocolate), Schultz, too, went in a new direction. He wrote a book with business writer Dori Jones called Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time.

Published in 1997 by Hyperion, the book told the story of Starbucks and the various business principles and life philosophies Schultz believes shaped the company's climb from small coffee retailer to a corporate giant. All proceeds from the book, which sold well, were given to the Starbucks Foundation, formed by Schultz in 1997, to support literacy. Schultz began to slow down in the later 1990s and in 2000 that he was stepping down as CEO but would remain as chairman.

The global success of Starbucks allowed Howard Schultz to once again immerse himself in sports, the passion of his youth, with his purchase of the National Basketball Association's Seattle Supersonics in January 2001. From 2001 to 2006, Schultz owned Seattle SuperSonics. He sold the team to Clayton Bennett, chairman of the Professional Basketball Club LLC.

By 2007 Starbucks boasted more than 15,000 locations worldwide but was foundering, and in January 2008 Schultz returned as CEO. He oversaw the closure of 900 stores and implemented an ambitious strategy to secure new avenues of growth, which included acquisitions of a bakery chain and the makers of a coffee-brewing system as well as the introduction of an instant-coffee brand.

He also oversaw changes to menu offerings at Starbucks stores. These moves were largely successful, and by 2012 Starbucks had rebounded financially. Five years later Schultz again stepped down as CEO, though he continued to be active in the company, serving as executive chairman until 2018. At the time, the chain had grown to include more than 28,000 stores in 77 countries.

In January 2019, Schultz revealed that he was preparing to run for president as an independent, though he said he would first tour the country to promote his new book, From the Ground Up: A Journey to Reimagine the Promise of America, before deciding whether to formally enter the race.

Along with weathering criticism for potentially drawing votes away from the eventual Democratic nominee, Schultz suffered a setback when back pain prompted a series of operations and forced him off the campaign trail. In September 2019, the businessman announced that he was abandoning his bid for the presidency.

Achievements

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  Inspired by the tempting aroma of freshly roasted coffee beans, Schultz established a billion-dollar becoming one of the richest men in the United States. According to Forbes, he has a net worth of roughly 4.1 billion dollars right now.
  
  Howard Schultz has been given several awards for his superb achievements. Schultz was awarded the National Leadership Award for philanthropic and educational efforts to battle AIDS in 1999. Five years later, he received the International Distinguished Entrepreneur Award from the University of Manitoba. Schultz was named Businessperson of the Year in 2011 by Fortune magazine for his creativity in the job market.

Works

More photos

• book

  • For Love of Country: What Our Veterans Can Teach Us About Citizenship, Heroism, and Sacrifice

    (Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and National Book Award nomi...)

    2014
  • From the Ground Up: A Journey to Reimagine the Promise of America

    (New York Times bestseller From the longtime CEO and chair...)

    2019
  • Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time

    (In Pour Your Heart Into It, former CEO and now chairman e...)

    1997
  • Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul

    (In this #1 New York Times bestseller, the CEO of Starbuck...)

    2011

Religion

Howard Schultz follows Judaism.

Politics

Howard Schultz was democrat until 2019. He endorsed both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In 2019 he expressed intentions for a presidential run as an independent candidate. He endorsed the Democratic nominee Joe Biden in September 2020.

Views

Schultz's corporate philosophy places great emphasis on supporting Starbucks' employees and on a commitment to the community and environmental projects. The company is the largest corporate sponsor of CARE, an international aid and relief organization. In 1995 Starbucks pledged $500,000 to CARE with the stipulation that the money goes to the countries that supply Starbucks with its coffee.

Schultz has also attracted considerable attention with his unconventional employment policies. He wanted to give Starbucks' employees "both a philosophical and a financial stake" in the business. Employees who worked 20 hours a week or more were eligible for medical, dental, and optical coverage as well as for stock options.

Schultz has remained firmly committed to employee and community enrichment. As part of his ongoing efforts, Starbucks teamed up with baseball star Mark McGwire and Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau to promote an adult literacy campaign. Starbucks also partnered with another sports star, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, to service inner-city neighborhoods.

In March 2013, Schultz made headlines and won wide applause after making a statement in support of the legalization of gay marriage. Howard Schultz is also the co-founder of the Schultz Family Foundation, which focuses on helping young people, veterans, military families, and others to access opportunities like education and employment.

In April 2018, two African-American men were arrested at a Philadelphia location for trespassing, after convening at the store but not ordering anything. Schultz subsequently spearheaded a racial-bias training program to help ensure that such an unfortunate incident wouldn't happen again.

Quotations: "Dream more than others think practical. Expect more than others think possible. Care more than others think wise."

Personality

Howard drinks 5 cups of coffee every day. He prefers a french press of espresso and a doppio coffee macchiato. He tries not to have coffee after 5 pm. In addition to his business ventures, Schultz is an important figure within the art world. Since 2016, he has ranked on ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list with his wife Sheri. He is known to be a key collector in Seattle, where he has been spotted at the Seattle Art Fair.

Interests

• art collecting

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Aristotle

• Politicians

  Abraham Lincoln, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden

• Writers

  Winners Dream: A Journey from Corner Store to Corner Office by Bill McDermott, On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis

• Artists

  Kazuo Shiraga

• Sport & Clubs

  basketball

• Athletes

  Gary Payton

• Music & Bands

  Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Nat King Cole, Billy Eckstine, The Beatles, Lady Gaga, Barbra Streisand, U2, Leon Bridges

Connections

In 1982, Schultz married Sheri Kersch, an interior designer, whom he had met four years before. They have two children: a son, Eliahu Jordan, and a daughter, Addison.

Father:

Fred Schultz

Mother:

Elaine Schultz

Spouse:

Sheri Schultz

Sheri Kersch Schultz co-founded the Schultz Family Foundation in 1996 with her husband, Howard Schultz.

Son:

Eliahu Jordan

Eliahu Jordan Schultz, the son of Howard Schultz, born in 1986, is working as a sports column writer for The Huffington Post.

Daughter:

Addison Schultz

Addison Schultz is a social-work clinician for the New York Foundling, a nonprofit organization that seeks to help children and adults reach their potential through the strengthening of families and communities.

Sister:

Ronnie Schultz

Brother:

Michael Schultz

Acquaintance:

Magic Johnson

References

• Howard Schultz: A Biography of the Starbucks Billionaire
  2018
• Howard Schultz on Instagram
• Howard Schultz Official Site