Robb LaKritz

Early life and education

LaKritz was born in Royal Oak, Michigan in 1972. The eldest of three siblings and only son of a prominent Michigan attorney and former kindergarten teacher, LaKritz was raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan where he attended Andover High School.

In 1994, LaKritz earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude and earning dual departmental honors for his work in international relations and political science. In 1992, LaKritz also studied international law and economics at Franklin University Switzerland, a private Swiss university specializing in international affairs.

In 1997, LaKritz earned a J.D. from Emory University School of Law, serving as an editor of the Emory International Law Review. LaKritz also studied law at East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai.

In 2017, LaKritz will matriculate to the University of Oxford, formally having been offered a place in its executive MBA program.

Law career

In 1997, LaKritz became an attorney with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Baker Donelson, working in the firm's International practice, which included former U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and former White House Chief of Staff and U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Howard H. Baker.

In 2001, he was appointed by President George W. Bush to be Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of the United States Treasury. At Treasury, LaKritz helped direct U.S. domestic economic policy and U.S. international economic policy, particularly with regard to China. He represented the U.S. Treasury at the World Economic Forum in 2002, Harvard's Symposium on Building the Financial System of the 21st century, and during the 2001 and 2002 annual meetings of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Asian Development Bank. He was involved in the formation of the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), a fund established by the U.S. government to reduce poverty through economic growth in some of the world's poorest countries; U.S. efforts to stem the financing of terrorism; and U.S. efforts to promote financial stability abroad. In March 2009, he was invited by the Wall Street Journal to participate in its Future of Finance Initiative.

Business career

In 2004, LaKritz founded LaKritz Adler Development, LLC, a real estate development company headquartered in Washington, D.C. Its projects include the restoration of the Dupont Circle Starbucks Building, which LaKritz Adler acquired in 2010. After restoring and re-leasing the property, LaKritz Adler sold the building for $16.25 million in a private auction that was reported to set the all-time record for highest price per square foot paid for a retail building in the Washington, D.C. area. Other of the company's projects in Washington D.C.'s Dupont Circle and Georgetown neighborhoods include the Veritas Building, another historic restoration, and 5185 MacArthur, the largest mixed-use building in Georgetown's tony Foxhall area. Throughout the 2000s, LaKritz Adler was also prominent in Washington, D.C.'s high-end luxury condominium market. In 2009, its Moderno project became the fastest selling condominium project of 2009 in Washington, D.C. LaKritz Adler developed Temperance Hall, the first sit-down restaurant on Georgia Avenue in more than fifty years and later Petworth Station, which brought a pharmacy back to the Petworth section of Washington, D.C. for the first time in four decades. The firm's projects have been profiled in the Washington Post, Washington Times, Washington Business Journal, Washington City Paper, DC Spaces Magazine, DC Modern Luxury, OnSite Magazine, and on Fox5 News.

LaKritz was named one of the most influential people under 40 in the nation's capitol by Washington Life Magazine. He has been a director on the board of the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organization, as well as a member of the 2008 Class of Leadership Greater Washington, District of Columbia Bar Association, Urban Land Institute, D.C. Preservation League and D.C. Building Industry Association. He is also an annual participant in the Aspen Institute Ideas Festival and TED.