Dan Schulman

Overview

Dan Schulman
Born	(1958-01-19) January 19, 1958 Newark, New Jersey, United States
Citizenship	United States
Education	Princeton High School
Alma mater	Middlebury College; New York University Stern School of Business
Occupation	Business executive
Employer	Verizon Communications
Known for	CEO of Verizon; former president and CEO of PayPal; founding CEO of Virgin Mobile USA
Title	Chief executive officer
Term	2025–present
Predecessor	Hans Vestberg
Board member of	Verizon Communications; Symantec (now NortonLifeLock); Lazard Ltd
Spouse	Summerly Schulman
Children	2
Awards	Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award; Legion of Honor; Fortune World's Greatest Leaders honoree

🌐 Dan Schulman (born January 19, 1958) is an American business executive who became chief executive officer (CEO) of Verizon Communications in October 2025, after previously serving as president and chief executive of PayPal and holding senior leadership roles at AT&T, Priceline.com, Virgin Mobile USA, Sprint and American Express. Known for combining digital innovation with a focus on financial inclusion, he has led companies through transitions from legacy business models to mobile-first, software-driven platforms while maintaining an emphasis on corporate values and employee welfare.

💼 Fintech transformation and social impact. During almost a decade at PayPal, Schulman oversaw a tripling of annual revenues from about US$8 billion to roughly US$30 billion, a fivefold increase in earnings per share and the expansion of the company into a global financial-technology platform offering digital wallets, merchant services and person-to-person payments in more than 200 markets. He articulated a mission of using technology to serve tens of millions of underbanked consumers and small businesses, and became associated with efforts to align corporate performance with broader social goals, including employee financial-wellness programmes and initiatives aimed at narrowing the racial wealth gap.

🌍 Activism and public recognition. A long-standing advocate of civil rights and economic opportunity, Schulman gained attention in 2016 when he cancelled a planned PayPal operations centre in North Carolina in response to state legislation affecting LGBTQ rights, and later when he tied PayPal’s corporate strategy to financial inclusion and support for furloughed United States federal workers during the 2018–19 government shutdown. His leadership at PayPal and beyond has been recognised with honours such as the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award and France’s Legion of Honor, as well as high placements in business-leadership rankings, including Fortune’s list of the World’s Greatest Leaders.

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Early life and education

🧒 Family background and early influences. Daniel H. Schulman was born on January 19, 1958, in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in nearby Princeton in a socially conscious Jewish household that emphasised public service and equality. His mother, S. Ruth Schulman, served as a dean at Rutgers University’s graduate psychology school, while his father, Mel Schulman, was a chemical engineer; family stories about his grandfather’s work as a union organiser in New York’s garment district and childhood memories of being taken in a stroller to civil-rights marches in Washington, D.C., reinforced an early sense that activism and professional life could be intertwined.

🎓 Schooling and university studies. Schulman attended public schools in Princeton, where he combined strong academic performance with extracurricular leadership, captaining multiple sports teams—including serving as quarterback on the high-school football team—and being voted homecoming king. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in economics from Middlebury College in Vermont and later an MBA in finance from New York University’s Stern School of Business, an academic foundation in economics and capital markets that underpinned his subsequent work in telecommunications, travel and payments. His alma maters later recognised his achievements by inviting him to deliver commencement addresses and awarding him honorary degrees.

🥋 Krav Maga and philosophy of movement. As a teenager, Schulman began practising Krav Maga, the Israeli martial art that he has continued to study into adulthood, ultimately earning a black belt and incorporating regular training into his daily routine. He has often linked the discipline’s emphasis on constant motion and situational awareness to his approach to business, summarising one of its lessons with the maxim that “never stand still” because “standing still is asking to be hit”, a metaphor he applies to companies facing rapid technological change.

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Early career and entrepreneurship

📞 Rise through the ranks at AT&T. Schulman joined AT&T in 1981 in an entry-level account-management role and spent roughly 18 years at the telecommunications giant, progressing through marketing and operational posts as the industry was deregulated and competition intensified. He eventually became the youngest member of AT&T’s senior executive team and president of the company’s core consumer long-distance business, overseeing tens of thousands of employees and gaining experience in managing large-scale customer operations and legacy infrastructure.

🧳 Dot-com leap to Priceline.com. In 1999, at the height of the dot-com boom, Schulman left the relative security of AT&T to join online travel company Priceline.com as president and chief operating officer, later becoming chief executive. Facing a volatile market in which many internet start-ups were failing, he reoriented Priceline around its core travel offerings and its “name-your-price” model, helping to increase annual revenues from around US$20 million to nearly US$1 billion within two years and positioning the firm as one of the more durable survivors of the era.

📱 Founding Virgin Mobile USA and integration into Sprint. Schulman’s next major move came in 2001, when Richard Branson recruited him to become the founding chief executive of Virgin Mobile USA, a start-up mobile-virtual-network operator aimed at younger, price-sensitive consumers in the United States. Launched nationally in 2002, Virgin Mobile differentiated itself through simple tariffs and “no hidden fees” branding in a market known for complex contracts, growing to more than 5 million subscribers and about US$1.3 billion in annual sales before its 2007 initial public offering and 2009 acquisition by Sprint Nextel; Schulman stayed on as president of Sprint’s prepaid group, integrating Virgin’s operations into its new parent.

💳 Transition into digital payments at American Express. After leaving Sprint, Schulman shifted from telecommunications into financial services, joining American Express in 2010 as group president of Enterprise Growth, a division created to expand the company beyond its traditional charge-card base. In that role he focused on developing mobile and online payment products, forming partnerships to reach new customer segments and exploring ways to use emerging technologies to serve consumers who were outside the firm’s usual affluent demographic, experience that deepened his interest in financial inclusion and the potential of fintech platforms.

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PayPal

💻 Appointment and separation from eBay. In September 2014, PayPal appointed Schulman as chief executive officer-designate, and he formally assumed the role in July 2015 when the online-payments business was spun off from eBay as an independent, publicly listed company. He framed PayPal’s mission around serving an estimated 70 million Americans who were underserved by the traditional financial system, arguing that digital wallets and mobile payments could provide affordable services to consumers and small businesses historically excluded from mainstream banking.

📈 Strategic transformation and growth. Over nearly nine years at the helm, Schulman led PayPal’s evolution from a primarily e-commerce checkout tool into a broad digital-finance platform offering person-to-person transfers, merchant services, small-business lending and in-store payments. During his tenure, annual revenues increased from about US$8 billion to roughly US$30 billion and earnings per share rose about fivefold, aided by organic expansion and acquisitions such as the US$2.2 billion purchase of Swedish point-of-sale provider iZettle in 2018, PayPal’s largest deal to date, which strengthened its international merchant franchise. Schulman also forged partnerships with banks, card networks, technology companies and retailers to embed PayPal’s services across a range of channels as mobile commerce accelerated worldwide.

🤝 Employee financial-wellness initiatives. Inside the company, Schulman emphasised that PayPal’s mission should start with its own workforce, after internal analysis revealed that many lower-paid employees were struggling to meet basic living expenses despite working for a successful financial firm. In response, he oversaw a package of measures that included raising wages, reducing health-care costs and granting stock awards to more staff, and in 2019 launched an employee financial-wellness programme intended to ensure that workers could cover essential needs and benefit directly from the company’s growth.

🌱 External social-impact programmes. Schulman also used PayPal’s balance sheet and network to support broader social initiatives, including a programme during the 2018–19 United States federal government shutdown that offered interest-free cash advances of up to US$500 to furloughed workers, a commitment that ultimately totalled about US$25 million. Under his leadership, the company pledged US$500 million to help close the racial wealth gap in the United States and committed a further US$100 million to support minority- and women-led businesses globally, positioning PayPal as a corporate advocate for economic inclusion.

🏅 Awards and public profile. Schulman’s combination of financial performance and social positioning drew attention from business media and public institutions. Fortune repeatedly included him among its Businesspersons of the Year and, in 2021, ranked him third on its list of the World’s Greatest Leaders, the highest-placed business executive on that year’s ranking. He received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Award in 2020 and, in 2024, was invested into the French Legion of Honor by President Emmanuel Macron for contributions to economic and social change, honours that reflected his prominence in debates about the role of corporations in society.

📉 Slowdown, investor pressure and departure. From 2021, PayPal faced slowing growth in the post-pandemic period and intensifying competition from other fintech and technology companies, leading the firm to miss some of its revenue and user-growth targets and to see its share price fall more than 60 percent from its peak. Activist investors and other shareholders pressed for efficiency gains, and in 2022 Schulman announced cost-saving measures and staff reductions while his own compensation fell by about 32 percent to roughly US$22 million, down from around US$32 million the previous year, reflecting the company’s pay-for-performance framework. In February 2023 he announced his intention to step down as CEO by the end of the year and remained in post until December to oversee the transition to his successor, leaving PayPal as a significantly larger and more diversified fintech company than it had been at the time of the eBay separation.

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Verizon CEO

📡 Board service and path to the top job. Schulman had longstanding ties to Verizon before becoming its chief executive, having joined the company’s board of directors in 2018 and serving as lead independent director by 2024, roles in which he contributed to debates on strategy, capital allocation and customer experience. His familiarity with Verizon’s operations and his record of leading digital transformations in both telecommunications and payments made him an attractive internal candidate when the board began succession planning for Hans Vestberg, who had been CEO since 2018.

📶 Appointment in 2025 and strategic context. On 6 October 2025 Verizon announced that Schulman would succeed Vestberg as CEO, with Vestberg staying on as an adviser during a transition period, marking a return for Schulman to the telecom sector at a time when the company was grappling with slow growth and heavy investment commitments. Under Vestberg, Verizon had spent tens of billions of dollars on 5G spectrum licences, acquired prepaid mobile provider TracFone and agreed to buy Frontier Communications’ fibre-optic network assets, but the company’s share price had lagged those of rivals and, on the day Schulman’s appointment was disclosed, the stock fell around 3 percent amid investor uncertainty about the new strategy.

🧭 Stated priorities and operating focus. In public statements following his appointment, Schulman described Verizon as being at a “critical juncture” and argued that the company had an opportunity to redefine its trajectory by gaining market share in both consumer and business segments while delivering “meaningful growth” in key financial metrics. He outlined priorities that included sharpening the value proposition for customers, lowering the cost to serve through operational efficiencies, optimising capital expenditure on network and fibre assets, and directing cash flows toward sustainable long-term growth for shareholders.

👥 Customer experience and culture. Schulman signalled that culture and customer experience would be central to his leadership at Verizon, telling employees that the lessons he valued most from PayPal were not about technology or scale but about “culture, listening to customers, and empowering teams to drive real change”. Industry commentators noted that Verizon’s customer-satisfaction scores had trailed some competitors and suggested that Schulman’s background in a highly consumer-facing fintech business could lead to renewed emphasis on service quality and potentially to experiments that link telecommunications offerings with digital financial services.

📊 Challenges ahead. Analysts have highlighted a number of issues that Schulman will need to address, including managing Verizon’s substantial debt burden from prior spectrum and network investments, integrating the large fibre-optic assets acquired from Frontier Communications and finding new revenue streams in a mature wireless market. Observers also expect scrutiny of any moves to streamline or divest non-core activities and of how far Schulman pursues initiatives related to environmental sustainability and digital inclusion, areas in which he has previously taken public positions.

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Financials and wealth

💵 Compensation at PayPal. Schulman’s remuneration during his PayPal years reflected both the firm’s growth and its pay-for-performance structure. In 2021, when PayPal’s share price and earnings reached record levels, his total compensation was around US$32 million, largely in stock awards tied to performance metrics. After the company missed several financial targets in 2022, the board reduced his pay by roughly one-third, to about US$22 million, comprising a base salary of around US$1 million and more than US$20 million in equity and incentive awards, a change that drew attention to the tightening link between management rewards and shareholder outcomes.

💰 Net worth and shareholdings. By the mid-2020s, analysts estimated Schulman’s personal net worth at approximately US$394 million, based on public filings of his holdings in companies where he has served as an executive or director, including PayPal, eBay, American Express, Sprint and Verizon, as well as board roles at firms such as NortonLifeLock and Lazard Ltd. He has not held founder-level stakes in any company; at PayPal’s peak, for example, his direct ownership was estimated at a small fraction of a percent of the total shares outstanding, a scale typical for a hired chief executive.

🏛️ Boards, forums and philanthropy. Beyond executive employment, Schulman has served on corporate boards and policy forums that provide additional income and influence, including directorships at Verizon, NortonLifeLock and Lazard, a life membership of the Council on Foreign Relations, co-chairmanship of the World Economic Forum’s steering committee on financial inclusion and participation in business groups such as the Business Roundtable and the Economic Club of New York. He has also been associated with educational and health-related causes, serving on the board of governors of Rutgers University and on the board of the advocacy organisation Autism Speaks, reflecting a personal interest in education and social welfare beyond his corporate responsibilities.

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Personal life and leadership style

👪 Family life and personal background. Schulman has generally kept details of his private life out of the spotlight, but public profiles describe him as married with a son and a daughter and note that he divides his time between coasts in the United States, including periods at a ranch property in Montana that offers respite from corporate work. Accounts of his family history emphasise the impact of his younger sister Amy Adina’s death in 1986, which led relatives to establish a memorial fund supporting social-justice projects and reinforced Schulman’s belief that professional success should be connected to service and advocacy.

🥊 Discipline and daily routines. Friends and colleagues frequently mention Schulman’s long-standing commitment to Krav Maga and other physical pursuits, which he often practises early in the morning before work and cites as sources of resilience and focus. The martial art’s principle of proactive movement – the idea that one should not remain static in the face of threats – has become a recurring metaphor in his speeches for how companies must innovate continuously if they are to avoid being “hit” by disruptive competitors or technological shifts.

🚶 Immersion experience with homeless youth. During his tenure at Virgin Mobile USA, Schulman undertook a widely reported personal experiment in which he spent approximately twenty-four hours living on the streets of New York City, unshaven, wrapped in a blanket and without money or a phone, to better understand the lives of homeless young people whom the company sought to support through charity partnerships. He later recalled that few people acknowledged him and that it took hours of begging to collect even a small sum, an experience he said fundamentally changed his view of what mattered and strengthened his resolve to use corporate platforms to aid vulnerable communities.

🗣️ Management approach and employee perceptions. Colleagues typically describe Schulman as an accessible, data-driven leader with a strong sense of mission, who prefers to empower teams rather than centralise decisions and who emphasises listening to frontline employees and customers through town-hall meetings and open forums. At PayPal he introduced programmes that allowed junior staff to shadow senior executives and encouraged employees to propose ideas directly to management, initiatives that contributed to high internal approval ratings and to his inclusion among Glassdoor’s top-rated chief executives during his tenure.

🎵 Public persona and interests. Despite leading large public companies, Schulman has cultivated a relatively low-key public image, favouring casual dress and often referencing his New Jersey roots, his admiration for American rock and folk musicians and his enjoyment of hiking and endurance events rather than conspicuous consumption. He remains close to his nonagenarian mother, who attended the ceremony in Paris at which he received the Legion of Honor, and he has recalled his father joking that the protest marches he attended as a baby probably earned him “one of the youngest photos in an FBI file”, an anecdote he uses to illustrate how early exposure to activism shaped his worldview.

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Controversies and challenges

⚖️ North Carolina expansion cancellation. One of the most prominent controversies of Schulman’s career arose in 2016 when, as PayPal’s CEO, he cancelled plans to open a global operations centre in Charlotte, North Carolina, after the state enacted the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, widely known as the “bathroom bill”, which restricted transgender individuals’ access to public restrooms. The decision, which halted an investment of several million dollars and an estimated 400 new jobs, was framed by Schulman as necessary because the law “violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture”, earning praise from human-rights advocates but criticism from state officials and some residents, as well as hate mail and threats directed at him personally; parts of the legislation were subsequently rolled back amid sustained pressure from businesses and activists.

📜 Acceptable-use-policy backlash over misinformation clause. In October 2022 PayPal faced a backlash after an updated version of its acceptable-use policy appeared to authorise fines of up to US$2,500 for users who spread “misinformation”, language that critics interpreted as empowering the company to police speech and confiscate funds. The draft policy sparked condemnation from commentators and politicians, including a letter from Republican members of the United States Congress, and prompted some users to call for boycotts; PayPal quickly retracted the wording, apologised and said the clause had been posted “in error”, stressing that it was not implementing new fines for misinformation. Schulman ordered an internal review of policy-development processes, but the incident remained a reference point in debates about the power of financial platforms over online expression.

📌 Investor scrutiny and restructuring. Throughout his later years at PayPal, Schulman faced calls from activist investors and analysts to reduce costs and improve margins, leading to multi-year efficiency programmes that included job cuts and a sharper focus on core businesses alongside ongoing spending on compliance and risk-management systems in response to regulatory expectations. Some commentators questioned the timing of his decision to retire in 2023, amid a depressed share price and heightened competition, while others framed his exit as the conclusion of an unusually long and largely successful tenure in which he avoided personal scandal and left a sizeable mark on the company’s strategy and culture.

🚀 Risks and expectations at Verizon. At Verizon, Schulman inherits a different but equally demanding set of challenges, including leveraging large capital expenditures on 5G and fibre-optic networks, navigating regulatory and competitive pressures in a mature industry and exploring whether new services—potentially including fintech offerings—can provide growth beyond traditional wireless subscriptions. Analysts have noted that his prior outspoken positions on issues such as LGBTQ rights and economic inclusion may influence how Verizon approaches environmental, social and governance matters, and that investors will closely watch whether his tenure delivers an improvement in the company’s long-term total shareholder returns.

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Awards and honors

• 🏅 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights "Ripple of Hope" Award (2020). Presented in recognition of Schulman’s leadership at PayPal and his advocacy for social justice and economic inclusion.
• 🎖️ Legion of Honor (2024). Invested by the President of France as a knight of the Legion of Honor for contributions to economic and social change, an honour highlighted in coverage of the ceremony in Paris.
• 📊 Business-leadership rankings. Repeatedly listed in business-press rankings, including being named among Fortune’s Businesspersons of the Year and ranking third on the magazine’s 2021 list of the World’s Greatest Leaders.

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