Sandeep Mathrani

Sandeep Mathrani is the CEO of the coworking company WeWork.

Mathrani was born in India and attended Eton boarding school in England before earning two master’s degrees from the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., and getting a job designing wastewater treatment plants. He switched to real estate in 1994, joining Forest City Ratner.

In 2002, he went to Vornado Realty Trust, where he stayed until he was hired by the shopping mall operator General Growth Properties to lead the Chicago-based REIT through bankruptcy in 2010. Mathrani raised $2.3 billion and recapitalized the company with another $6.8 billion to turn around GGP’s fortunes. It eventually was sold to Brookfield Property Partners for $14.8 billion in 2018, and Mathrani was named CEO of Brookfield’s retail group.

Mathrani was tapped to take over WeWork in early 2020, after the coworking operator experienced a tumultuous 2019 where an IPO rollout showed the company was far less profitable than many analysts believed, tens of billions of dollars were shaved off previous valuations, and the behavior of its previous CEO and co-founder, Adam Neumann, came under scrutiny.

Only a month after taking over WeWork, the COVID-19 crisis hit. The fallout from that has consumed Mathrani’s time at the company.