Who

Frankfort is chairman and CEO of Coach Inc., the handbags and accessories company.

Backstory

The Bronx-born son of a cop, Frankfort attended Columbia Business School (Henry Kravis was a classmate) and spent nearly a decade as a city official. In the mid-1970s he served as commissioner of the New York City Agency for Child Development, where he played a critical role in reestablishing the city's Head Start program. After he was passed over for a job by then-Mayor Ed Koch, in 1979 Frankfort left civil service behind and joined Coach, the leather goods company founded by Miles Cahn in 1941. Some six years after Frankfort arrived, Coach was sold by Cahn to Sara Lee—yes, the company that owns Jimmy Dean sausage also once owned Coach—and Frankfort became a senior exec in Sara Lee's intimates and accessories group, the division that controlled Coach. By 1996, he was president of the brand; in 2000, Sara Lee decided to spin Coach off and Frankfort became its chairman and CEO following the company's IPO.

Of note

Frankfort has presided over a radical turnaround at Coach over the past decade or so. When he was named president in 1996, Coach was best known for manufacturing the sort of unfashionable leather briefcases your dad or grandfather might carry to work. Thanks to new product lines, gleaming high-end retail outlets and buzzy ad campaigns, Coach reinvented itself as a luxury brand, albeit one within reach of the average consumer—the industry term is "accessible luxury"—competing with vaunted names like Louis Vuitton and Hermes in the process. Much of the creative credit goes to Reed Krakoff, whom Frankfort hired from Tommy Hilfiger in 1996 and who has managed to enliven the brand with stylish new products. Frankfort, for his part, earned credit for his financial acumen, and for guiding the company to record profit. Yet after a solid decade of almost uninterrupted good news, the brand now appears to be faltering. Revenue, foot traffic, and the company's stock price—which had previously seemed almost gravity-defying—are all down; Coach's aggressive expansion plans—it had planned to have 500 locations in North America by 2013—now appear in jeopardy. The culprit: the downturn in the economy, from which the truly luxury brands that Coach competes with are fairly immune.

By the numbers

Frankfort has long been one of the highest-paid CEOs in America. He earned $65.86 million in 2007—and some $265.2 million over the past five years—making him the 17th highest paid CEO in America, according to Forbes. Given Coach's woes as of late, his compensation for 2008 is expected to be considerably lighter.

Personal

Frankfort and his wife of more than three decades, Roberta ("Bobbie"), have three grown children: Tamara, Alana, and Sam. The Frankforts live in a 6,500-square-foot, five-floor penthouse at the Beresford, where their neighbors include John McEnroe, Jerry Seinfeld, Helen Gurley Brown, and John Stossel. After purchasing the apartment from Bob Weinstein—along with the attic space or "tower room" above—they renovated the entire spread, which now features terraces on two floors, panoramic views of Manhattan, a spiral staircase to the attic area, and a library. They have a weekend home in Sagaponack.