Hillary Clinton
Hillary ClintonReuters

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said he is backing Hillary Clinton for president.

Schultz, a billionaire Democrat who has mostly donated to Democrats and backed President Barack Obama in his campaigns, said Wednesday that Clinton has the experience needed to be president.

"I think it's obvious Hillary Clinton needs to be the next president,” he said in New York at a conference convened by CNNMoney, the news channel’s financial news website.

The Seattle-based Schultz has written about his hardscrabble Jewish upbringing in New York, and about his transformative encounter in Jerusalem with Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, who headed the Mir Yeshiva.

He received an award from Aish Hatorah, a Jewish Orthodox pro-Israel group, in 1998.