The top shareholder for self-storage real estate investment trust (REIT) Public Storage Inc. was recently named in a list of America’s 20 wealthiest women. Tamara Gustavson, 60, the daughter of company cofounder B. Wayne Hughes, has an estimated worth of $5.5 billion. She’s also the richest person in Kentucky, according to the source. The list was compiled by finance website GOBanking Rates, based on the 2020 Forbes list of richest people in the world.
Gustavson has an 11 percent stake in Public Storage, which she joined in 1983 and where she held various positions before becoming vice president. She left the company in 2003, but returned in 2008 as a board member. In 2019, she was named a chairwoman of the board of trustees for American Homes 4 Rent, a Calabasas, Calif-based REIT founded by her father that invests in single-family rental homes.
Gustavson earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern California in 1983. She resides in Lexington, Ky., at Spendthrift Farm, a racehorse-breeding enterprise. One of its stallions, Cloud Computing, was the winner of the 2017 Preakness Stakes, an annual thoroughbred horse race held in Baltimore.
The GOBankingRates list also includes three women from the Cox Family, which holds a vast media, telecom and automotive empire, and five from the Walton Family, which founded Walmart.
Based in Glendale, Calif., Public Storage has interests in 2,548 self-storage facilities in 38 states, with approximately 175 million net rentable square feet. It holds a 35 percent interest in Shurgard Self Storage SA, which has 241 facilities in seven European countries, with approximately 13 million net rentable square feet.
Sources:
Yahoo Finance, 20 Richest Women in America Right Now
Wikipedia, Tamara Gustavson
