Hatkoff made a fortune as a real estate investor, but he's better known for having co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival with his wife, Jane Rosenthal, and her business partner Robert De Niro.

After earning his MBA from Columbia in 1978, he teamed up with his Chemical Realty colleague John Klopp and founded a real estate investment trust called Victor Capital. The company was acquired by Chicago real estate titan Sam Zell in 1997 and folded into a publicly-traded real estate company, Capital Trust. Hatkoff stayed on as managing partner until 2001, but following the events of Sept. 11th, he decided to focus his efforts on a more personal project: reviving downtown via a world-class film festival in conjunction with his wife Jane Rosenthal and her producing partner Robert De Niro.

Hatkoff, Rosenthal, and De Niro organized the first festival in the spring of 2002, attracting some 150,000 people to the battered 'hood. By the second year, the number of attendees had doubled, an estimated $50 million in revenue was pumped into the local economy, and the well-respected programmer Peter Scarlet had been brought in as the festival's executive director. These days Tribeca is nearly a two week event (as opposed to the original five), attracts half a million attendees, and is increasingly a hot spot for film acquisition deals by studio executives. [Image via Getty]