Howard D. Schultz is an American businessman and author, born on July 19, 1953, in Brooklyn, New York. He served as the chairman and chief executive officer of Starbucks from 1986 to 2000, from 2008 to 2017, and as interim CEO from 2022 to 2023. Schultz began working at Starbucks in 1982, later leaving to open Il Giornale, a specialty coffeeshop that subsequently merged with Starbucks.