Businesspeople from Chicago

Wesley Rose (born February 11, 1918 – April 26, 1990) was an American music industry executive and record producer.

Leander James McCormick (February 8, 1819 – February 20, 1900) was an American inventor, manufacturer, philanthropist, and businessman and a member of the McCormick family of Chicago and Virginia.

Leonard H. Lavin (born October 29, 1919 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American businessman, racehorse owner/breeder and philanthropist who in 1955 founded the Alberto-Culver Company.

Vincent Kosuga (January 17, 1915 – January 19, 2001) was an American onion farmer and commodity trader best known for manipulating the onion futures market.

Nick E. Rosa (born 1951) is an American executive, entrepreneur and venture capitalist.

John Daniel Hertz, Sr.

Nathaniel Springs.

John Graves Shedd (July 20, 1850 – October 22, 1926) was the second president and chairman of the board of Marshall Field & Company.

Nico Santucci, born (Nicholas Joseph Santucci) 1967 in Chicago, Illinois is an Italian-American restaurateur, entrepreneur and designer.

Andrew Perlman (born June 19, 1975) is an American entrepreneur who has co-founded nine venture-backed companies in the telecom, high-tech, pharmaceuticals, energy, water, and biotechnology industries.

Dorr Eugene Felt (March 18, 1862 – August 7, 1930) was an American inventor and industrialist who was known for having invented the Comptometer, an early computing device, and the Comptograph, the first printing adding machine.

(For the organist, see Kenneth W. Griffin.) Kenneth C.

Alicia Patterson (October 15, 1906 – July 2, 1963) was the founder and editor of Newsday, which became a respected and Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper.

John Chippewa Crerar (8 March 1827 – 19 October 1889) was a wealthy American industrialist and businessman from Chicago whose investments were primarily in the railroad industry.

John Shepard Reed (born 1939; age 78) is the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.

Joseph "Joe" Kellman (January 7, 1920 – January 7, 2010) was an American businessman and philanthropist.

Thomas S. White, Jr.

William Wrigley Jr.

Bruce A. Heyman (born 1958) is an American businessman and currently the United States Ambassador to Canada.

Harold Gary Morse (December 19, 1936 – October 29, 2014) was an American billionaire and the developer of The Villages, Florida.

George W. Gage (March 9, 1812 – September 24, 1875) was an American baseball executive, president of the Chicago White Stockings from 1872 to 1875.

David Archibald Smart (October 4, 1892 – October 15, 1952), co-founder of Esquire magazine, and, with his brother Alfred Smart (1895-1951), co-publisher of Esquire and Coronet.

Eugene C. "Gene" Cashman (October 7, 1921 - April 6, 2000) was an American policeman turned businessman and a Thoroughbred racehorse owner.

Ginna Sulcer-Marston (born Ginna Sulcer February 19, 1958 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American advertising executive notable for anti-drug public service advertising campaigns at the Partnership for a Drug Free America, a nonprofit consortium of advertising professionals which ran targeted media campaigns to unsell illegal drugs.

Levi Ziegler Leiter (November 2, 1834 – June 9, 1904) was a Chicago businessman.

Michael Shamberg (born 1945?) is an American film producer and former Time–Life correspondent.

Bram Goldsmith (February 22, 1923 – February 28, 2016) was an American real estate developer, banker and philanthropist.

Robert Anthony "Bob" Mariano (born March 1950; pronounced /mɑːriːɑːnoʊ/) is an American businessman, currently CEO and chairman of Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based supermarket chain Roundy's.

James Lewis (J.L.) Kraft (December 11, 1874 – February 16, 1953) was a Canadian-American entrepreneur and inventor.

Frederick G. Wacker Jr.

Harold Pierce (August 11, 1917 – March 8, 1988) was an African-American entrepreneur who founded the successful Harold's Chicken Shack restaurant chain in Chicago, Illinois.

Leonard Lee Ratner (1918–2000) was an American businessman who built his fortune through mail-order sales before moving into real estate investment.

Andrew Watson "Butch" Armour III (October 22, 1908 – December 27, 1991) was a member of the prominent Armour family of meatpacking fame (Armour and Company), a company president, and notable philanthropist who, together with his wife Sarah Wood Armour, gave millions of dollars to Princeton University, St.

Frank Shepard (1848–1902), a salesman for a Chicago legal publisher, invented the Shepard's legal citation system.

George Dexter Whitcomb (May 13, 1834 – June 21, 1914) an American manufacturer and founder of the town of Glendora, California.

Jonathan Ogden Armour (November 11, 1863 – August 16, 1927) was an American meatpacking magnate and only surviving son of Civil War-era industrialist Philip Danforth Armour.

Albert Bernard Grossman (May 21, 1926 – January 25, 1986) was an American entrepreneur and manager in the American folk music scene and rock and roll.

Robert Douglas Stuart (1886–1975) was a United States businessman who served as United States Ambassador to Canada from 1953 to 1956.

Henry B. Babson (December 1, 1875 – October, 1970) was an entrepreneur, investor in phonograph technology, and notable breeder of Arabian horses.

Sam K. Harrison or Sam Kazar Harootenian (December 12, 1908 – January 1, 1994) was a Corporal of the United States Army during World War II.

Maurice Joshua, also known just as Maurice, born in Chicago, Illinois, is a Grammy Award winning record producer who is most known for his laid-back and soulful house music-style remixes.

William McCormick Blair (May 2, 1884 – March 29, 1982), was an American financier.

William Rosenwald (August 19, 1903 - October 31, 1996) was an American businessman and philanthropist.

William Sanderson McCormick (November 2, 1815 – September 27, 1865) was an American businessman who developed the company that became the major producer of agricultural equipment in the 19th century.

Zev Braun (born October 19, 1928 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American motion picture producer.

John Donald MacArthur (March 6, 1897 – January 6, 1978) was an American businessman and philanthropist who established the John D.

Barney Balaban (June 8, 1887 – March 7, 1971) was the son of Bessarabian Jewish emigrants who was president of Paramount Pictures from 1936 to 1964, and innovator in the cinema industry.

Ben Burns (August 25, 1913 – January 29, 2000) was a pioneering editor of black publications (including the Chicago Daily Defender, Ebony, Jet and Negro Digest) and a public relations executive in Chicago.

Henry Regnery (January 5, 1912 – June 18, 1996) was an American publisher.

Herman C. Krannert was a businessman and philanthropist in the Midwest of the United States who made millions in the corrugated fiber products industry and subsequently made generous contributions to education and the arts.

Maggie Anderson (born Margarita in 1971 (age 45–46)) is an American activist, CEO, and co-founder, with her husband John Anderson, of the Empowerment Experiment.

Arnold Laven (February 3, 1922 – September 13, 2009) was an American film and television director and producer.

Richard Teller Crane (May 15, 1832, at Paterson, New Jersey – January 8, 1912, at Chicago, Illinois), son of Timothy Botchford Crane and Maria Ryerson, was the founder of R.

Chester Hjortur Thordarson (May 12, 1867 – January 6, 1945) — born Hjörtur Þórðarson — was an Icelandic-American inventor and manufacturer of electrical apparatus who eventually held nearly a hundred technology patents related to transformers, inductors, high voltage coils, and more.

Samuel Insull (November 11, 1859 – July 16, 1938) was a British-born American business magnate; an innovator and investor based in Chicago who greatly contributed to creating an integrated electrical infrastructure in the United States.

Bruce Arthur Norris (February 19, 1924 – January 1, 1986) was owner of the Detroit Red Wings professional ice hockey team from 1952 to 1982.

King Camp Gillette (January 5, 1855 – July 9, 1932) was an American businessman.

Lester Melrose (December 14, 1891 – April 12, 1968) was one of the first American producers of blues records.

Rebecca Ann Jarvis (born September 28, 1981 in Minneapolis, Minnesota) is a financial journalist and was a finalist on Season 4 of The Apprentice.

Eric Paul Lefkofsky (born September 2, 1969) is an American entrepreneur.

Cecil B. Brown, Jr.

Christian Picciolini (born November 3, 1973) is the co-founder of the nonprofit peace advocacy organization, Life After Hate, and penned a memoir, Romantic Violence: Memoirs Of An American Skinhead, that was released in 2015 and details his time as a leader of the American white power movement.

Donald T. Sterling (born Donald Tokowitz; April 26, 1934) is an American businessman and attorney.

Lloyd Eugene Rigler (May 3, 1915 – December 7, 2003) was an American businessman and philanthropist.

Lori Greiner (born December 9, 1969) is an American inventor, entrepreneur, and television personality.

Mark Randel is an American game programmer and the founder, principal technologist, and majority owner of Terminal Reality.

Martine Aliana Rothblatt (born 1954) is an American lawyer, author, and entrepreneur.

Tom B. Rosenberg is an American film producer as well as founder and chairman of Lakeshore Entertainment.

Susan Lynn "Suze" Orman (born June 5, 1951) is an American author, financial advisor, motivational speaker, and television host.

Arnold "Arnie" Morton (1922–May 28, 2005) was a restaurateur who founded Morton's Restaurant Group/Morton's Steakhouse.

Charles Dumazer (born January 10, 1991), professionally known as C-Sick , is a Hip Hop record producer from Chicago, Illinois.

Carl H. Davis, Sr.

Charles H. ("Lucky Charlie") Weeghman (March 12, 1874 – November 1, 1938) was one of the founders of the short-lived major league baseball organization called the Federal League (1914–1915).

David C. Bohnett (born April 2, 1956) is an American philanthropist and technology entrepreneur.

Edward Lasker (May 15, 1912 – July 11, 1997) was an American businessman and Thoroughbred racehorse owner.

Edward Morris (October 1, 1866 - November 3, 1913) was President of Morris & Company, one of the three main meat-packing companies in Chicago.

H. G. Haugan (November 7, 1840 – January 29, 1921) was a Norwegian-born, American railroad and banking executive.

Loomis was a native of Vermont who came to Chicago as a pioneer settler in 1834.

Jay Robert (J.B.) Pritzker (born January 19, 1965) is an American venture capitalist, entrepreneur, philanthropist and private business owner.

Jack Irving Schwarz (December 19, 1896 – January 6, 1987) was a producer of the Frank Buck movie Tiger Fangs.

Julius Rosenwald (August 12, 1862 – January 6, 1932) was an American businessman and philanthropist.