Once known as The King of Hotels, these days Barry Sternlicht might be better served with the King of Real Estate Branding moniker.

In fact, Sternlicht wears many crowns. He is both CEO and chairman of Starwood Capital Group, which he formed in 1991, and chairman of Starwood Property Trust, one of the largest commercial mortgage real estate investment trusts in the world. He is also runs homebuilding company TRI Pointe Homes, hotel operator Societe du Louvre, crystal maker Baccarat S.A., and used to be the chairman and CEO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide (he left that post in 2005, ten years after founding it).

The son of a Holocaust survivor (and factory operator who eventually lost his job when the factory shuttered), Sternlicht got his first job at investor JMB Realty, and after nearly a decade he started his own firm with the help of $20 million from the Burden and Ziff families. That firm, Starwood, feasted on real estate auctions in the savings-and-loan scandals fallout, and quickly made Sternlicht a recognizable name in the industry.

Sternlicht is responsible for creating and amplifying several brands in the industry: the W hotel chain was his, focusing on catering mainly to the business-class-jet-set; Sternlicht also expanded the St. Regis Hotel to a worldwide brand.

Today Sternlicht, who graduated with a bachelors from Brown University and an MBA from Harvard, also sits on many boards, from the Robin Hood Foundation to The U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Foundation Trustee Council.  -NR