Rafael Pastor has an extensive and diversified track record in both running successful businesses and advising business leaders. His career has spanned the media/entertainment. education, and business//financial services sectors. 

He currently serves or recently served as a Director on the Board of Ensight (as Chairman), RosettaBooks (as a Founder), and Experience Investment Corp. (a SPAC). He also serves as an Advisor to a major international private equity firm, and is a limited partner and advisor in several investment partnerships. He served for six years on the Board of KinderCare Education, the largest early-childhood education company in the United States of which he remains a significant shareholder. The company IPO’d in October 2024 (NYSE: KLC).

From 2004 to 2013, he was Chairman of the Board and CEO of Vistage International, the world’s largest for-profit CEO membership company which he co-owned with Larry Ellison, Michael Milken and Thomson Reuters until it was sold to a private equity firm.

Previously, based in New York, he held these positions at global media companies: CEO of Hoyts Cinemas Corporation; President of USA Networks International; Executive Vice President, International, of News Corporation and Fox Television International (reporting to Rupert Murdoch): and President of CBS/Fox Video International. Subsequently, he was co-Founder and co-Chairman of the Sonenshine Pastor (now Sonenshine Partners) investment-banking firm in New York City.

He is also: Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the School of Global Policy and Strategy at UC San Diego (UCSD); Trustee of the UCSD Foundation; and Member of the Executive Committee of the Dean’s Advisory Council of the Rady School of Management at UCSD. He is a former Board Member of the National Association of Corporate Directors/Pacific Southwest Chapter. He has served as a Trustee of several educational, cultural and humanitarian organizations.

He started his career as an attorney, first at the Wall Street law firm of Hawkins, Delafield and Wood and then as Associate General Counsel at CBS Inc. He earned a BA from Columbia University and a JD from NYU School of Law. Born in Israel to Hungarian parents, he speaks Hungarian and French and (less fluently) German and Hebrew.

In addition to his experience as a Board member of corporate and not-for-profit entities, he has participated in Board meetings and deliberations as a CEO, attorney and investment banker.