Daniel Marc Snyder (born November 23, 1964) is an American businessman and owner of the Washington Commanders, an American football team belonging to the National Football League (NFL). He bought the team, then known as the Washington Redskins, from Jack Kent Cooke's estate in 1999. Snyder's ownership of the team has been controversial, with accusations of a toxic workplace culture leading to a Congressional investigation, as well as the lack of success sustained by the team. Early life and education Snyder was born on November 23, 1964, in Maryland, the son of Arlette (née Amsellem) and Gerald Seymour "Gerry" Snyder. His family is Jewish. His father was a freelance writer who wrote for United Press International and National Geographic. He attended Hillandale Elementary School in Silver Spring, Maryland. At age 12, he moved to Henley-on-Thames, a small town near London, where he attended private school. At age 14, he returned to the United States and lived with his grandmother in Queens, New York. A year later, his family moved back to Maryland and he graduated from Charles W. Woodward High School in Rockville, Maryland. His first job was at B. Dalton bookstore in the White Flint Mall. At 17, Snyder experienced his first business failure when he partnered with his father to sell bus-trip packages to Washington Capitals fans to see their hockey team play in Philadelphia. By age 20, he had dropped out of the University of Maryland, College Park and was running his own business, leasing jets to fly college students to spring break in Fort Lauderdale and the Caribbean. Snyder claims to have cleared US$1 million running the business out of his parents' bedroom with his friend Joe Craig and several telephone lines. Snyder courted real estate entrepreneur Mortimer Zuckerman, whose U.S. News & World Report was also interested in the college market and who agreed to finance his push to publish Campus USA, a magazine for college students. Zuckerman and Fred Drasner, co-publisher of Zuckerman's New York Daily News, invested $3 million in Campus USA. The venture did not generate enough paid advertising and was forced to close after two years. Career In 1989, Snyder and his sister Michele founded a wallboard advertising (the sale of advertisements placed on boards inside buildings) company with seed money from his father, who took a second mortgage on his estate in England, and his sister, who maxed out her