Tamara Hughes Gustavson (born 1961) is an American business executive and billionaire.[1][2] The daughter of Public Storage co-founder and chairman B. Wayne Hughes,[3] Gustavson is Public Storage's largest shareholder, owning 11% of the company.[2] As of August 2022, she ranked #251 on the Forbes 400 with a net worth of $8 billion.[4]
Gustavson was born in 1961 to B. Wayne Hughes and Marjorie McKechnie.[1][3] She has one older brother, B. Wayne Hughes Jr.[3] She graduated from San Marino High School in 1979.[5][6] Gustavson attended the University of Southern California, and was a member of the Pi Beta Phi sorority.[7] She graduated in 1983 with a Bachelor of Science in public affairs.[7]
Gustavson joined Public Storage in 1983. She worked at the company for twenty years, rising to senior vice president before leaving in 2003.[2][7] She joined the company's board of trustees in 2008[7] and, as of 2022, was the largest shareholder with an 11% stake.[2] In 2016, with an estimated net worth of $4.9 billion, she established herself as the wealthiest person in the state of Kentucky.[2][8]
Gustavson was on the board of directors of the USC-CHLA Institute for Pediatric Clinical Research from 2004 to 2008, and has served as Director of the William Lawrence & Blanche Hughes Foundation.[2][7]
In 2016, Gustavson joined the board of American Homes 4 Rent, a publicly traded REIT specializing in single-family rental homes founded by B. Wayne Hughes.[2][9] She became chairwoman of its board in May 2019.[9] In 2020, she ranked 154 on the Forbes 400 with a net worth of $4.6 billion.[10] In October 2022, Forbes estimated her net worth at $7.3 billion.[2]
Gustavson married her husband Eric in 1993.[5] They have two children and live in Lexington, Kentucky.[11] She and her husband own Spendthrift Farm, a Thoroughbred race horse breeding farm in Kentucky[12] that is home to ten Kentucky Derby winners and the Hall of Fame mare Beholder.[2][13]
In May 2022, Gustavson had put her Malibu property on sale for $127.5 million.[1][14] In October 2022, American businessman Byron Allen bought the property for $100 million.[15][16]
