Arthur Martinez

About Arthur Martinez

Arthur C. Martinez is a retired retail executive and corporate board leader. Previously, he was Chairman and CEO of Sears, Roebuck and Co., and Vice Chairman of Saks Fifth Avenue in NYC. He served as Executive Chairman of Abercrombie & Fitch and Non-Executive Chairman of HSNi, Inc. Arthur received a B.S. degree from Polytechnic University, an M.B.A. from Harvard University, and is the 1999 recipient of Harvard’s Alumni Achievement Award, the school’s highest honor. He received an honorary Doctor of Laws from Notre Dame in 1997 and an honorary Doctor of Engineering from Polytechnic University in 2008. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors of AIG; as a Director of PepsiCo, IAC/Interactive Corporation, Kate Spade, Ameritech, Amoco and Martha Stewart Living Omni Media; as Chairman of the Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and of the National Retail Federation. He served as Chairman of the Board of ABN-AMRO, the Netherlands largest bank. He is a Life Trustee of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Northwestern University; he served as a Trustee of The Maine Coast Heritage Trust for nine years and served as a Trustee for nineteen years (and as Chairman of the Board of Trustees for nine years) of Greenwich Hospital. He also served on the Board of the National Urban League from 1998-2004.

Among the many honors he has received throughout his career are selections as CEO of the Year in 1996 by Financial World magazine, Business Statesman of the Year in 1997 by the Harvard Business School Club of Chicago and in 1998, he received the National Retail Federation’s Gold Medal for Excellence in Retailing. He is the author of “The Hard Road to the Softer Side”, published by Crown, a division of Random House.