Gary Friedman

Born to a mother who had schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, he lost his father at age 5 and spent much of his childhood moving from apartment to apartment. He gained his foothold in retail as a stock boy at a Gap store. After he got a D average in his first year at Santa Rosa Junior College, a college counselor told him he was wasting taxpayers’ money — so he dropped out and focused on his work at Gap. The move paid off; Friedman rose to oversee 63 Gap stores in southern California as a regional manager, before jumping ship to Williams-Sonoma, where he became the president of the Williams-Sonoma and Pottery Barn brands. When he landed at RH in 2001, the company was on the brink of bankruptcy.