Howard Schultz grew up in a public housing project in Brooklyn. He has often described the day his father, a truck driver, broke his ankle on the job and was fired shortly after — with no compensation, no health insurance, and no protections of any kind — leaving the family to struggle for money.
Schultz worked his way through Northern Michigan University on athletic and academic aid, and in 1982 joined a small Seattle coffee-bean retailer called Starbucks as head of marketing. A 1983 business trip to Italy exposed him to the espresso-bar culture there, and he came back convinced Starbucks should sell coffee by the cup in a café setting — an idea the original owners weren't interested in pursuing.
Schultz left to start his own coffee-bar chain, Il Giornale, then bought Starbucks outright in 1987 for about $3.8 million, expanding it from 11 stores into the global brand it is today — one of the most recognized names in the world, worth tens of billions.
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