Joseph Sitt

[2][3] He began working at a young age in flea market booths at the Aqueduct and Roosevelt racetrack parking lots in the New York City area.

[6] From Sitt’s early realization of the retail gap that left broad swathes of inner city consumers largely underserved by major retailers, in 1991 he founded Ashley Stewart (a name inspired by Laura Ashley and Martha Stewart), which sold modern and fashionable plus-size clothing to urban women.

[1] Each Ashley Stewart store hired from within the community, and the company was recognized by President Clinton for its large contribution to the nation’s innovative Welfare to Work program.

[8] As business boomed, Sitt sold his interest in 2000 to concentrate on urban real estate through his company Thor Equities.

The company owns property in the United States, Canada, Europe, Russia, India and Latin America, with portfolio transactions and a development pipeline in excess of $10 billion and totaling more than 20 million square feet.

[11] Joseph Sitt is the chairman and founder of the not-for-profit Global Gateway Alliance (GGA), which was created in 2012 to address the infrastructure challenges that New York metropolitan area airports face.

Sitt made an initial $1 million donation to start the group, which seeks to make New York’s airports among the best in the world.

Located at 3050 Stillwell Avenue in Coney Island, the public art wall project features renowned local and international artists including Crash, Daze, Lee Quiñones, Ron English and Miss Van.

[18] Joseph Sitt is an active board member of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, one of the most respected community development organizations in the United States.

[24] Sitt was involved in a long-standing WhatsApp group chat from October 2023 through early May 2024 with some of the United States' most powerful business leaders with the stated goals of "chang[ing] the narrative" in favor of Israel and "help[ing] win the war" on U.S. public opinion following Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel.

"[25] Members of the 2023-2024 WhatsApp group chat, including Sitt, also held a video call in April 2024 with New York City Mayor Eric Adams in an effort to, according to reporting by The Washington Post, "pressure Columbia’s president and trustees to permit the mayor to send police to the campus" to shut down criticism of Israel's offensive military operations in Gaza, which many campus protesters, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, civil servants, and governments around the world have alleged to be genocide.