Ben Navarro

Benjamin W. Navarro (born 1962 or 1963) is an American billionaire businessman, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Sherman Financial Group, LLC, which owns Credit One Bank. As of July 2024, he has an estimated net worth of US$1.5 billion according to Forbes.

Early life
Navarro was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts, one of eight children of Frank Navarro, a college football coach for Williams College who posed for the Norman Rockwell painting The Recruit. He grew up in Westerly and Chariho, Rhode Island. He is of Italian descent through his father. He lived in Princeton, New Jersey and graduated from Princeton High School, when his father was coaching the Princeton University football team.

Navarro earned a bachelor's degree in finance from the University of Rhode Island in 1984.

Career
Navarro worked for Goldman Sachs for three years, before joining Citigroup in 1988, rising to vice president and co-head of mortgage sales and trading.

He left Citigroup in 1997, and in 1998 founded Sherman Financial Group, a global diversified investment services company. In 2005, Sherman bought a small bank and renamed it Credit One Bank, now a major credit card issuer focused on subprime borrowers.

In 2021, Navarro founded Beemok Hospitality Collection, a hospitality company consisting of hotel, restaurant, and entertainment properties in the Southeast. It acquired Charleston Place, the largest hotel in Charleston at 434 rooms, in October 2021.

Sports investments
Navarro owns the Live To Play Tennis Club in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, which has hosted three USTA national junior tennis championships, and six International Tennis Federation women's pro circuit tournaments.

In 2018, he was a bidder for the Carolina Panthers NFL sports franchise. He lost to David Tepper.

In September 2018, he bought Charleston Tennis LLC, owners of the Charleston Open women's tennis event, through his company Beemok Sports LLC.

In 2022, Navarro funded extensive renovations to Credit One Stadium, a 20-year-old city-owned facility, as a gift to the City of Charleston. The stadium re-opened on April 2, 2022, for the 50th annual Credit One Charleston Open, the largest women's only tennis event in North America.

Also in 2022, Navarro's Beemok Sports bought the rights to the Western & Southern Open. The event features men’s and women’s singles tournaments on the ATP and WTA tour. In 2022, 19 of the top 20 players in the world competed in the Western & Southern Open, which is one of nine tennis events in the world designated as a top-tier tournament for both male and female players.

Personal life
Ben Navarro is married to Kelly; they have four children and live in Charleston, South Carolina. Their daughter, Emma Navarro played tennis for the University of Virginia. Another daughter, Meggie currently plays tennis there. Emma has a career high WTA singles ranking of No. 20, achieved on March 18, 2024, and won the NCAA division 1 women's singles title on May 28, 2021 as a freshman.

In 2021, Ben Navarro contributed $500,000 to a political action committee (PAC) supporting Tim Scott. In 2023, he contributed $5 million to the PAC.

Philanthropy
Navarro's philanthropic ventures are focused on education and mental wellness. In 2008, he founded Meeting Street Schools, a South Carolina-based network of one private and three public elementary and middle schools serving an entirely under-resourced demographic. Meeting Street Schools were founded upon the belief that all children deserve an excellent education regardless of their geographic or socioeconomic circumstances and now serve over 1,800 students.

In December 2020, Navarro announced the Meeting Street Scholarship Fund wherein he pledged to supplement the cost of higher education for any Charleston County high school students who also qualified for the Pell grant and the State's LIFE scholarship, ensuring college opportunities for hundreds of South Carolina high school graduates each year. Since inception, the Meeting Street Scholarship Fund has expanded to an additional 10 South Carolina counties and has awarded $20 million in scholarship dollars to over 500 students. In 2023, the Meeting Street Scholarship Fund announced its aim to expand the initiative to all 46 South Carolina counties which would impact over 2,000 students and amount to $42 million in scholarship dollars.

In 2020, Navarro founded Modern Minds in partnership with the Medical University of South Carolina. It is a new type of mental wellness center that uses holistic health strategies to help adults living with anxiety or depression.