Harlan Foster is the CEO and founder of Crown Group, Inc., an international hospitality company that through its affiliates owns and operates several hotels and entertainment properties. Crown Group’s companies employee over 1,000 people and serve over 2 million customers per year. In addition to the hospitality industry, Mr. Foster has also owned and operated a variety of businesses within several other sectors, including energy and industrial services, specialty chemicals, upstream oil and gas, plastics, and others. Over the past 25 years, Mr. Foster has developed dozens of significant properties spanning nine countries and has obtained substantial expertise across a wide variety of development types. These properties range from 5-star resorts to workforce housing developments and also encompass extensive industrial building and road construction projects as well as urban planning. Early in his career, Mr. Foster served as Vice President of a Texas-based buyout firm that acquired and operated a variety of businesses within diverse industries. He began his career in 1998 in the corporate finance group of
Caremark Rx, a Fortune 500 healthcare company at the time, where he worked on numerous M&A and financing transactions. Mr. Foster holds an MBA from Southern Methodist University and a BBA from the University of Alabama, where he served as president of the student body. While at SMU, he also completed the full curriculum for the Masters of Accountancy. Additionally, Mr. Foster is an accomplished pilot with substantial international experience in a variety of turbine aircraft. He is a native of Baldwin County, Alabama and lives with his wife and three children in Point Clear, Alabama.