Craig Hatkoff

Craig M. Hatkoff is an American real estate investor and philanthropist from New York City. Along with his wife Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro, he co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Institute in 2002. The three founders were recipients of the inaugural September 11 National Museum and Memorial Foundation "Notes of Hope Award" for Distinction in Rebuilding in September 2008.

Hatkoff is Chairman of Turtle Pond Publications which owns or invests in a number of new media, entertainment and publishing ventures. Hatkoff is the co-founder of Capital Trust and served on the board of Directors. He also serves on the Boards of the Taubman Centers Inc., Wildlife Direct, the NYU Child Study Center, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Sesame Workshop and The Borough of Manhattan Community College Foundation. He has also authored multiple best-selling children's books with his young daughters, including the #1 New York Times best-selling Owen & Mzee: The True Story Of A Remarkable Friendship, which describes the friendship between a tortoise and an orphaned hippopotamus in Kenya after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Other works include Good-Bye, Tonsils (2001), Knut: How one little polar bear captivated the world (2007) about the polar bear cub Knut from the Berlin Zoo and Looking for Miza which he has written together with his daughters Juliana and Isabella. Winter's Tail, (Scholastic Books, 2007, ISBN 978-0-545-12335-8) is about the disabled dolphin Winter. The Hatkoffs' series of children's books have won numerous prestigious awards, including the American Book Association Book of the Year and the Christophers Award. Owen and Mzee has been published in 17 languages including Swahili, Braille, Arabic and Hebrew.

One of Turtle Pond Publications' significant investments is in Fillpoint LLC a leading videogame e-commerce direct-to-consumer distribution and fulfillment provider for the nation's leading retailers. In February 2009, Fillpoint acquired the much larger videogame distribution and publishing operations, SVG Distribution and Crave Entertainment, of the Handleman Company that focus on the value sector with a national in-store distribution platform. The transaction established Fillpoint as a potent videogame distributor with both on-line and in-store capabilities.

Hatkoff is a 1972 graduate of The Albany Academy, and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Colgate University. He received an MBA from Columbia University.