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Leonard Riggio is the chairman of Barnes & Noble Inc. (NYSE: BKS) a Fortune 500 company which is the world’s largest bookseller. In addition he is the chairman and principal shareholder of several privately held companies including Barnes & Noble College Booksellers serving more than 500 college and universities across America. He is also the founder and largest shareholder of GameStop (NYSE: GME) a Fortune 500 company which operates 5 000 video-game stores worldwide. In all the enterprises in which he is involved employ almost 100 000 people.
Beginning with a single college bookstore in 1965 Mr. Riggio built one of the largest enterprises in the history of American retail. He is widely known as a visionary in the bookselling industry and as a brilliant marketer and entrepreneur. Having realized his goal of making books and the world of ideas available to the general public he continues to bring innovation to the marketplace in which he has spent his entire career.
Mr. Riggio devotes himself as well to many philanthropic initiatives having served on nearly two dozen not-for-profit boards including the Children’s Defense Fund the Black Children’s Community Crusade and the Italian American Foundation. Recently he served as chairman of the Dia Art Foundation for eight years where he led and funded the effort to build Dia:Beacon one of the world’s most highly respected and revered contemporary art museums. Currently he has founded and funded Project Home Again which plans to build and donate several hundred homes for displaced citizens in New Orleans. Mr. Riggio also devotes much of his time to public education. He is a member of the board of the New York Fund for Public Schools and has led the nation’s first-ever private endowment for a public high school Brooklyn Technical High School from which he graduated in 1958.
Mr. Riggio has received numerous awards including the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and the Frederick Douglass Medallion. In November 2002 he received the Americanism Award from the Anti-Defamation League its highest honor. The award cited his work to celebrate diversity and make the dream of freedom and equality a reality for so many Americans. Mr. Riggio is the recipient of honorary doctorate degrees from Baruch College of the City University of New York Bentley College and Long Island University. He has been inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Entrepreneurs at Babson College and the Texas A&M Retail Hall of Fame. He also lectures regularly on college campuses has delivered several commencement addresses and has been the keynote speaker to numerous educational and business groups across the country.
Mr. Riggio is married and has three children and three grandchildren. | 