How Did I Get Here?

Mark Hoplamazian

President and chief executive officer, Hyatt Hotels Corp.
from
  • Education
  • Episcopal Academy, Newtown Square, Pa., class of 1981
  • Harvard, class of 1985
  • University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, class of 1989
  • Work Experience
  • 1985–87
    Financial analyst, First Boston Corp.
  • 1988
    Summer associate, Boston Consulting Group
  • 1989–96
    Associate, Pritzker & Pritzker
  • 1996–2006
    Vice president, president, the Pritzker Organization
  • 2006–Present
    President, CEO, Hyatt Hotels
  • Life Lessons
  • “When you come across something you’re not familiar with, say, ‘I don’t know that yet.’ ”
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  • “Explore widely. As T.S. Eliot said, ‘We shall not cease from exploration/And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.’ ”
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  • “You have to answer the question ‘Why does this enterprise exist?’ It’s much bigger than making money.”
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  • With his dad, Harry, and his mom, Victoria, 1965
  • “I came from an entrepreneurial background. My dad, my uncles, and my brothers all owned businesses—landscaping, nurseries, rental cars, auto repair. My father passed away when I was in eighth grade.”
  • “I hadn’t experienced back-to-back 100-hour weeks. The work pace was pretty extreme.”
  • Attending a Packers game with his family, 2012
  • “When you’re working for a family, there’s a sense of responsibility, because it’s not a faceless group of investors. It’s the people sitting next to you. Also, families have values—it’s not just about maximizing the return. It’s a more generational than transactional thought process.”
  • At the Grand Hyatt New York, 2016
    “We’ve got 708 properties in 56 countries and 110,000 colleagues at 13 brands.”
  • “If you wanted to do engineering, you did a dual degree between MIT and Harvard, and the logistics were torturous. So I switched to economics.”
  • 1985
     
  • “It was a family office for the Pritzkers. I was involved in every activity: recapitalizing, management changes, new investments.”
  • With Duncan Niederauer (center), then CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, and Thomas Pritzker, 2010
  • “The Pritzker Organization was 10 people. Hyatt was around 80,000. I embraced my ignorance and learned as much as I could as quickly as I could.”