Chairman and CEO
John Sherman is Chairman and CEO of the Kansas City Royals Baseball Club, leading an ownership group that acquired the team on Nov. 25, 2019. He previously served as Vice Chairman of the Cleveland Guardians Baseball Club. He is active in the business of Major League Baseball serving as chair of the PDL Executive Board and is a member of the Ownership Committee and Long-Term Strategic Planning Committee. He is also a member of the Executive Council.
Mr. Sherman is an entrepreneur, civic leader and philanthropist who is extensively involved in communities throughout the Kansas City region.
His first startup, LPG Services, grew rapidly and merged with Dynegy (NYSE:DYN) in 1996. That same year, he founded Inergy, L.P. which became a public company in 2001. Mr. Sherman was the Chairman and CEO of Inergy, L.P. and Inergy Midstream, L.P. and led the company through a period of tremendous growth, creating a total enterprise value of nearly $5 billion prior to merging with Crestwood Holdings in 2013. Mr. Sherman currently serves on the board of the merged company—Crestwood Equity Partners (NYSE:CEQP).
Mr. Sherman is a past chair of the Civic Council of Greater Kansas City and the Truman Presidential Library Institute. He is a trustee and current chair of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and a trustee of the National World War I Museum and Memorial. John and his wife, Marny, are founders of the Sherman Family Foundation which focuses on supporting education in the Kansas City region. He also serves on the Technology Acceleration Partners, LLC (TechAccel) Board of Directors.
Mr. Sherman has been recognized with numerous honors for his business, civic, and philanthropic leadership in Kansas City. He was a recipient of Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award, and he was named Entrepreneur of the Year by UMKC’s Bloch School of Business and the Council for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. In 2012, he received the Hope Award from the National MS Society for his philanthropic work in the Kansas City community.
In 2013, Mr. Sherman was awarded an honorary doctorate by the UMKC School of Education for his work in urban education. In 2014, he was inducted into the inaugural class of the Bloch School of Business Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame with a group that included Ewing Kauffman, the original owner of the Kansas City Royals who brought Major League Baseball back to Kansas City, and Lamar Hunt, founder of the American Football League (AFL) and former owner of the Kansas City Chiefs. In 2017, Mr. Sherman was the recipient of the Henry W. Bloch Human Relations Award from the Jewish Community Relations Bureau/American Jewish Committee. Last November, Mr. Sherman was named the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce’s 2021 Kansas Citian of the Year.