Barry Sternlicht
Executive Chairman, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

Barry Sternlicht is Executive Chairman of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., a company he founded in 1995. From 1995 through 2004, Mr. Sternlicht was Chairman and CEO of Starwood, today one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world with more than 750 properties in 80 countries. Starwood is a fully integrated owner, operator and franchiser of hotels and resorts with six internationally renowned brands, including: St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, W Hotels, Sheraton, Westin, Four Points, as well as Starwood Vacation Ownership, Inc., a premier developer and operator of vacation ownership resorts. Starwood Hotels employs over 110,000 people.

Barry Sternlicht has been credited as a dynamic and innovative hotel leader, creating new products and programs with immediate global appeal, and the creation of Westin's "Heavenly Bed", "Heavenly Bath", "Westin Workout" and other innovations. Barry created and launched the first new hotel brand in recent history, W Hotels, which has grown to 20 operating hotels and an additional dozen under way in the United States and internationally.

Mr. Sternlicht is also Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Starwood Capital Group, a private real estate investment firm he formed in 1991. For the past fourteen years, he has structured more than two hundred separate investment transactions with a cost basis of more than $7 billion. Starwood's funds have invested in more than 8,000 apartment units, more than 125 hotels, over six million square feet of office properties, 12 million square feet of retail and several thousand acres of land in residential subdivisions in six states. Today the firm manages more than $2 billion of capital on behalf of its high net worth and institutional partners. Starwood Capital employs sixty-five at its office in Greenwich, Connecticut and maintains offices in Bangkok, Tokyo, London, Atlanta, Phoenix and San Francisco.

Barry Sternlicht was born in 1960. He received his BA, magna cum laude, with honours from Brown University. He later earned an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School. Barry is a trustee of Brown University. He serves on the Board of Directors of The Estée Lauder Companies, the National Advisory Board of JP Morgan Chase, and the Advisory Board of Eurohypo Bank. He is a member of the Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy, the Presidential Tourism & Travel Advisory Board, the Young Presidents Organization, and the World Travel & Tourism Council, the Council for the United States and Italy, and the Urban Land Institute.