Chip Conley
Founder

Chip Conley founded Joie de Vivre in 1987, and it is now California's largest independent hotel company and the second largest boutique hotel company in the United States. At the age of 26 with no industry experience, Chip transformed a seedy 1950’s "no-tell motel" into the world-renowned Phoenix Hotel, a legendary rock 'n roll hotel catering to the likes of David Bowie, Linda Ronstadt and Little Richard. Building on an innovative design formula that inspires guests to experience an “identity refreshment” during their visit, today Joie de Vivre consists of a vast collection of award-winning hotels, restaurants and spas across the state with more than 3,000 employees, and annual revenues approaching $250 million. Chip and his company’s time-tested techniques and transformational leadership practices have been featured in Fast Company, Fortune, and the Wall Street Journal.

A best-selling author, Chip shares his unique prescription for success in his most recent book, PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow (Jossey-Bass, 2007). Based on noted psychologist Abraham Maslow’s iconic Hierarchy of Needs theory, PEAK illustrates how a business’s three key stakeholders – Employees, Customers and Investors – are ultimately motivated by peak experiences that address their higher, unspoken needs. He demonstrates how to create such experiences using real-world examples from his own company and other peak-performing organizations such as Apple, Whole Foods Market, Harley-Davidson, and Southwest Airlines. His next book, entitled Emotional Equations, is due to hit the shelves at the end of 2011. Chip’s earlier works include The Rebel Rules: Daring to be Yourself in Business, (Simon & Schuster, 2001) and Marketing That Matters: 10 Practices to Profit Your Business and Change the World, co-authored with Eric Friedenwald-Fishman (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2006).

Chip has been honored with top industry and business awards, and in 2008 was selected as one of the four finalists for the “Corporate Hotelier of the World” award by Hotels magazine. In 2007, Chip was honored by the San Francisco Business Times as the Most Innovative CEO among business leaders across all industries in the greater Bay Area. The following year, Joie de Vivre was awarded the 2nd Best Place to Work in the same region.

Chip is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization, the Global Business Network and the Social Venture Network. A committed philanthropist, Chip founded San Francisco’s Annual Celebrity Pool Toss, which has raised more than $4 million for inner-city youth programs that now thrive in the troubled neighborhood where he launched his first hotel. Chip received his BA and MBA from Stanford University, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Psychology from Saybrook Graduate School & Research Center in 2009.

Read more about Chip at chipconley.com


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