Jack Mitchell

The best-selling author of Hug Your Customers: The Proven Way to Personalize Sales and Achieve Astounding Results and Hug Your People: The Proven Way to Hire, Inspire, and Recognize Your Employees to Achieve Remarkable Results, Jack Mitchell is one of the country's most respected retailers and speakers on customer service.

As chairman and CEO of Mitchells/Richards/Marshs and Wilkes Bashford - a three-generation family business that operates men's and women's specialty stores in Connecticut, New York, and California - Mitchell has a long, proven record of providing exceptional, personalized customer service and maintaining employee loyalty and longevity. He has been recognized as one of the top ten retail visionaries of his time by The Daily News-Record, one of the most widely read retail trade publications in the country.

His first book, Hug Your Customers, was a Wall Street Journal bestseller and received rave reviews in The New York Times. It was endorsed by Jim Nantz of CBS Sports, author Ken Blanchard, and Warren Buffett who said, "It's a gem. I wish everyone at Berkshire would follow his advice - we would own the world." Mitchell's second book, Hug Your People, shares a business blueprint to drive success and achieve greater satisfaction at work.

A passionate and enthusiastic public speaker, Mitchell has keynoted at over 250 events for such corporations as Morgan Stanley, Condé Nast, Payless, Nike, Starbucks, Wells Fargo, Luxottica Group, Harvard University, and Columbia University. His personalized speeches provide specific techniques to get to know and better service customers, hire employees and make them happy and productive, and run a successful family business that passes from generation to generation. He has appeared on NBC's Today Show and Kudlow & Cramer as well as on numerous radio shows and in online and print articles. He has been quoted in national magazines as a customer service and management leadership expert and was listed as one of Inc. magazine's "26 Entrepreneurs We Love."

Jack Mitchell obtained his BA from Wesleyan University in 1961 and his MA from the University of California-Berkeley before joining the family business. He holds a number of community leadership awards from the Anti-Defamation League, the menswear division of UJA-Federation of New York, and Sacred Heart University. He is on the board of the Yale Cancer Center and the board of trustees of Greenwich Hospital and is an executive in residence at the Columbia University School of Business.