Ben Navarro
Benjamin W. Navarro (born 1962/1963) is an American billionaire businessman, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Sherman Financial Group, LLC, which owns Credit One Bank. Early life. He is one of eight children of Frank Navarro, a college football coach who posed for the Norman Rockwell painting "The Recruit". He was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts, when his father was football coach at Williams College. He grew up in Westerly and Chariho, Rhode Island. He lived in Princeton, New Jersey and graduated from Princeton High School, when his father was coaching the Princeton University football team. Navarro  earned a bachelor's degree in finance from the University of Rhode Island. Career. Navarro worked for Goldman Sachs for three years, before joining Citigroup in 1988, rising to vice president and co-head of mortgage sales and trading. He left Citigroup in 1997, and in 1998 founded Sherman Financial Group, a global diversified investment services company. In 2005, Sherman bought a small bank and renamed it Credit One Bank. Credit One Bank, based in Las Vegas, Nevada, is a technology and data-driven financial services company. Credit One is one of the top 10 largest Visa credit card issuers  in the United States with over 12 million cardholders across the country. In 2018, Credit One was named the "Philanthropic Business of the Year - Private" by Vegas Inc. for its philanthropic efforts in Affordable Housing & Homelessness, Employment Services, and Financial Education. In 2021, Navarro founded Beemok Hospitality Collection, a hospitality company consisting of hotel, restaurant, and entertainment properties throughout the Southeast. The collection originated in October 2021 with the acquisition of their flagship property, the Charleston Place - the largest hotel in Charleston at 434 rooms. Other notable properties in the collection include The Cooper, a 225-room luxury hotel being  developed along downtown Charleston’s waterfront; The Riviera Theater, a registered historic landmark Art Deco theater in downtown Charleston; and Hotel Domestique, a luxury hotel in Traveler’s Rest, South Carolina. Navarro has an estimated net worth of about $3 billion. Sports interests. Navarro owns the Live To Play Tennis Club in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, which has hosted three USTA national junior tennis championships, and six International Tennis Federation women's pro circuit tournaments. In 2018, he was a bidder for the Carolina Panthers NFL sports franchise. He ultimately lost to David Tepper. In September 2018, he bought  Charleston Tennis LLC, owners of the Charleston Open women's tennis event, through his company Beemok Sports LLC. In 2022, Navarro funded extensive renovations to Credit One Stadium, a 20-year-old city-owned facility, as a gift to the City of Charleston. The newly-renovated stadium debuted on April 2, 2022 for the 50th annual Credit One Charleston Open, the largest women's only tennis event in North America. Personal life. He is married to Kelly Navarro, they have four children and live in Charleston, South Carolina. His daughters, Emma and Meggie Navarro, are involved in tennis. Emma is  a collegiate tennis player at the University of Virginia. She has a career high WTA singles ranking of 194 achieved on March 21, 2022 and won the NCAA division 1 women's singles title on May 28, 2021 as a freshman. Meggie is committed to play collegiately at UVA. Philanthropy. Navarro's philanthropic ventures are focused on education and mental wellness. In 2008, he founded Meeting Street Schools, a South Carolina-based network of one private and three public elementary and middle schools serving an entirely under-resourced demographic. Meeting Street Schools were founded upon the belief that all children  deserve an excellent education regardless of their geographic or socioeconomic circumstances and now serve over 1,800 students. In December 2020, Navarro announced the Meeting Street Scholarship Fund wherein he pledged to supplement the cost of higher education for any Charleston County high school students who also qualified for the Pell grant and the State's LIFE scholarship, ensuring college opportunities for hundreds of South Carolina high school graduates each year. In 2020, Navarro, in partnership with the Medical University of South Carolina, founded Modern Minds, a new type of mental wellness center that uses holistic health strategies to help adults  living with anxiety or depression.