Tyra Banks and Greg Hayes make one of the most unlikely pairings on the internet. Tyra Lynne Banks is an American supermodel, television host, producer, and businesswoman whose main income has flowed from her modeling contracts, her hit television franchises, and her growing portfolio of businesses. She has spent most of her adult life in Los Angeles and more recently relocated to Sydney, Australia with her family as her dessert brand expanded. Gregory J. Hayes, by contrast, is an American corporate executive best known as the former chairman and chief executive officer of RTX Corporation, whose income comes from decades of executive compensation, stock awards, and board service in the aerospace and defense world.
Why do search engines keep putting these two names side by side? Because both built remarkable second acts. Banks turned a runway career into a television and business empire, while Hayes turned a finance job into the corner office of one of the largest defense contractors on the planet. This guide lays out the verified facts about both of them, side by side, with no invented connection.
| Detail | Tyra Banks | Greg Hayes |
|---|---|---|
| Full name | Tyra Lynne Banks | Gregory J. Hayes |
| Born | December 4, 1973 (age 52) | 1960 or 1961 (age 64–65; exact date not publicly confirmed) |
| Birthplace | Inglewood, California, USA | United States (grew up in Williamsville, New York) |
| Residence | Sydney, Australia (long based in Los Angeles) | Not widely published |
| Profession | Supermodel, television host, producer, actress, businesswoman | Corporate executive, former CEO, board director |
| Known for | America’s Next Top Model, The Tyra Banks Show, Victoria’s Secret | United Technologies, RTX Corporation |
| Main income source | Television production and hosting, brand licensing, businesses | Executive compensation, stock awards, board service |
| Education | Immaculate Heart High School; Harvard Business School executive program (2012) | Purdue University (B.A., economics, 1982); certified public accountant |
| Partner/Spouse | Louis Bélanger-Martin (boyfriend; never married) | Private; family details not publicly reported |
| Children | 1 son, York Banks Asla (born 2016) | Not publicly reported |
| Net worth | About $90 million (Celebrity Net Worth estimate) | No authoritative published estimate; one profile site guesses $80–120 million (unverified) |
Tyra Banks and Greg Hayes Age
Tyra Banks was born on December 4, 1973, in Inglewood, California, which makes her 52 years old as of 2026. She started modeling as a teenager and was already booking Paris Fashion Week runways before she could vote. Her age matters because her career has unfolded in three distinct acts: a decade as a working supermodel, a decade and a half as a television creator and host, and now a growing chapter as an entrepreneur and brand builder.
Greg Hayes was born in 1960 or 1961, which puts him at about 64 to 65 years old. The exact date is not publicly confirmed, which is typical for executives who keep their private lives out of the press. His age tells a different story: a slow, steady climb through corporate finance across nearly four decades, from the accounting department to the chairmanship of one of America’s largest aerospace companies. Banks became famous before 20; Hayes reached the top after 50.
Who Is Tyra Banks?
Tyra Lynne Banks was born to Carolyn London, a medical photographer, and Donald Banks, a computer consultant. She has an older brother, Devin Banks, and her parents divorced when she was six. As a girl she considered herself an “ugly duckling,” a detail she has returned to many times on television, and she graduated from Immaculate Heart High School in Los Angeles in 1991.
She began modeling at 15 and was rejected by four agencies before L.A. Models signed her; she moved to Elite Model Management at 16 and then to Milan. In her first runway season she booked 25 shows at the 1991 Paris Fashion Week. The work kept coming: editorials for Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, and Cosmopolitan; runway walks for Chanel, Christian Dior, Valentino, and Giorgio Armani; and a CoverGirl cosmetics contract signed in 1993.
Her barrier-breaking moments defined an era. She became the first African American woman featured on the cover of GQ and the first on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 1996, with a solo cover in 1997. She became a Victoria’s Secret Angel in 1997, won VH1’s Supermodel of the Year award, and retired from the runway in 2005, only to return for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover in 2019 and the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in 2024. She has also acted, with roles in Higher Learning, Life-Size, and Coyote Ugly, plus appearances on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Gossip Girl.
Tyra Banks as a Television Mogul
In 2003, Banks created America’s Next Top Model, and that single decision changed how she earned money forever. She served as host, executive producer, and a significant owner of the series for its first twenty-two seasons, and the show grew into a global reality television franchise with international editions. At the height of the franchise’s popularity, reports estimated she earned between $5 million and $10 million per year from salary and production profits, with syndication and licensing adding more on top.
She followed it with The Tyra Banks Show, a daytime talk show that ran from 2005 to 2010 and won two Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Talk Show Informative. She later hosted America’s Got Talent for its 12th and 13th seasons and Dancing with the Stars starting with its 29th season, also serving as an executive producer. Her production company, Bankable Productions, produced her talk show, Top Model, and the 2008 film The Clique. Television, not modeling, became the engine of her fortune.
Tyra Banks as a Businesswoman
Banks treats her name like a company, and she went back to school to learn how. In February 2012 she completed the nine-week Owner/President Management executive education program at Harvard Business School, a non-degree course for business owners, not an MBA. Her move from entertainment into executive life places her in the company of leaders like Oracle’s Safra Catz, whose executive journey we compare with AT&T’s John Stankey in our profile of Safra Catz and John Stankey.
Her ventures spread across beauty, media, publishing, and food. She founded the cosmetics brand Tyra Beauty in 2014, wrote the young adult novel Modelland, which topped The New York Times Best Seller list in 2011, and co-authored Perfect Is Boring with her mother in 2018. She has also served as a personal branding guest lecturer at Stanford University.
Her most visible current venture is SMiZE & DREAM (SMiZe Cream), the boutique ice cream brand she founded in 2020, inspired by childhood memories of sharing ice cream with her mother on Friday nights. The brand opened pop-up shops in Los Angeles, Dubai, and Washington, D.C., and now has a permanent flagship location in Sydney, the reason she relocated to Australia with her family. In late 2025 her “hot ice cream” concept went viral, and in 2026 she joined Heidi Klum as a recurring judge on Project Runway.
Who Is Greg Hayes?
Gregory J. Hayes grew up in Williamsville, New York, and graduated from Williamsville South High School in 1978. He played football at Cornell University while studying pre-law for a year, then transferred to the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1982. He later became a certified public accountant.
After graduating, Hayes joined Sundstrand Corporation, an aerospace supplier, which United Technologies Corporation (UTC) acquired in 1999. He rose through management, serving as UTC’s chief financial officer from 2008 to 2014, then became chief executive officer in November 2014 and added the chairman’s title in September 2016. He is a classic finance-first leader: disciplined about capital, impatient with sprawling portfolios, and comfortable making big, uncomfortable calls.
Greg Hayes and the Transformation of United Technologies
Hayes took the top job at UTC with a clear mission: turn a sprawling industrial conglomerate into a focused aerospace company. He moved in stages. In 2015 he sold Sikorsky Aircraft. In 2018 he bought Rockwell Collins, a maker of avionics and aircraft cabin systems, in one of the largest aerospace deals of the decade; the combination created Collins Aerospace. In 2020 he completed the separations of Otis Elevator Company and Carrier Corporation into independent businesses.
Picture a big house divided into smaller homes. Each move reshaped the portfolio, selling businesses that no longer fit and doubling down on aerospace. It was patient, numbers-driven work, and it set up the largest chapter of his career.
Greg Hayes and the Creation of RTX
In April 2020, UTC’s remaining aerospace businesses, Pratt & Whitney and Collins Aerospace, merged with Raytheon Company to form Raytheon Technologies, later renamed RTX Corporation. Hayes led the combined company as chief executive officer, overseeing roughly 180,000 employees and about $67 billion in annual sales. He is not the only defense chief we profile alongside a star: Northrop Grumman chair and CEO Kathy Warden appears in our pairing of Aretha Franklin and Kathy Warden.
Hayes retired as CEO effective May 2, 2024, handing the job to Christopher T. Calio, and continued as executive chairman until he left the board on April 30, 2025. He now serves as a director of Phillips 66 and was appointed to the board of Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD) in March 2025. He also serves on the Business Roundtable and the board of Nucor.
Tyra Banks and Greg Hayes Spouses and Partners
Tyra Banks has never been married. Her most public relationship was with Norwegian photographer Erik Asla, whom she dated from 2013 to 2017. Asla shot for Vogue and Elle and even filmed the opening credits of America’s Next Top Model. The two welcomed a son, York Banks Asla, on January 27, 2016, via gestational surrogacy, after Banks spoke openly about her struggles with infertility. They split in 2017 but continue to co-parent amicably, and Asla has three older daughters from previous relationships.
Since at least 2019, Banks has been in a relationship with Canadian businessman Louis Bélanger-Martin. The pair keep a low profile, though they appeared together at the Los Angeles premiere of Bad Boys for Life in early 2020 and have relocated together to Sydney, Australia, where Bélanger-Martin is reportedly involved with her SMiZE & DREAM business. In January 2025, Banks’ Los Angeles home was destroyed in the Palisades Fire; she and Bélanger-Martin were in Australia at the time.
Greg Hayes’ family life is not publicly reported. Unlike celebrity executives who court the spotlight, Hayes has kept his spouse, children, and residence out of the press throughout his career, and no reliable source publishes those details. Honest reporting says that plainly rather than filling the gap with guesses.
Tyra Banks and Greg Hayes Net Worth
Tyra Banks has an estimated net worth of $90 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. That figure rests on three pillars. The first is television: as creator, host, executive producer, and a significant owner of America’s Next Top Model, she reportedly earned $5 million to $10 million per season at the show’s peak, with syndication, international licensing, and brand extensions adding more; at the height of her television empire in the late 2000s, Celebrity Net Worth estimated she was earning about $30 million per year. The second is modeling and endorsements, including her Victoria’s Secret and CoverGirl contracts. The third is her businesses: Tyra Beauty, her bestselling books, and now SMiZE & DREAM. Property has played a part too; she has bought and sold several Los Angeles homes at healthy profits over the years.
Greg Hayes has no authoritative published net worth figure. Forbes does not list one for him, and salaried executives who are not founders rarely attract published wealth estimates. One executive-profile site, CEO.wiki, guesses his net worth at $80 million to $120 million from decades of UTC and RTX stock awards, but that figure is unverified and should be treated as speculation, not fact. What is documented is his pay: his reported salary as a UTC executive was $13.4 million in 2016, and as RTX chief executive his annual compensation, including salary, bonuses, and stock awards, typically ran in the $20 million range. He built his wealth the executive way: salary, bonus, and stock, compounded over nearly four decades.
Tyra Banks and Greg Hayes: Are They Connected?
No. There is no reliable evidence of any family tie, business partnership, or personal relationship between Tyra Banks and Greg Hayes. They work in entirely different industries, fashion and entertainment on one side, aerospace and defense on the other, and move in entirely different circles. Search engines pair names for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with reality: shared news cycles, listicles, and algorithms learning that readers type one name and then the other. This same search-pairing phenomenon drives other executive pairings on this site, such as Tim Dove and Shari Redstone.
What the two genuinely share is a theme: reinvention at scale. Banks reinvented herself from model to media mogul to entrepreneur. Hayes reinvented a sprawling conglomerate into a focused aerospace giant. Both bet on change before their peers did, and both won. That shared theme is what makes the pairing worth reading, even without a personal link.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are Tyra Banks and Greg Hayes related?
No. No reliable source documents any family tie, business partnership, or personal relationship between them. Their names simply appear together in search results, a common trick of search algorithms that pair trending names.
What is Tyra Banks best known for?
Banks is best known as one of the defining supermodels of the 1990s, the first Black woman on the covers of GQ and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, a Victoria’s Secret Angel, and the creator and host of America’s Next Top Model, which she launched in 2003.
What is Greg Hayes best known for?
Hayes is best known as the former chairman and CEO of United Technologies and then RTX Corporation. He led the 2020 merger of UTC’s aerospace businesses with Raytheon that created one of the world’s largest aerospace and defense companies.
Is Greg Hayes still the CEO of RTX?
No. Hayes retired as CEO effective May 2, 2024, when Christopher T. Calio succeeded him. He served as executive chairman until leaving the board on April 30, 2025, and now serves on the boards of Phillips 66 and Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD).
Who is Tyra Banks’ partner?
Banks is in a long-term relationship with Canadian businessman Louis Bélanger-Martin, with whom she has been linked since 2019. She has never been married. She shares a son, York Banks Asla, born in 2016 via gestational surrogate, with her former partner, photographer Erik Asla.
What is Tyra Banks’ net worth?
Celebrity Net Worth estimates Tyra Banks’ net worth at about $90 million, built on her television franchises, modeling and endorsement contracts, bestselling books, and businesses including SMiZE & DREAM.
Where does Tyra Banks live now?
Banks has long been based in Los Angeles, but she relocated to Sydney, Australia, with her partner and son as her SMiZE & DREAM ice cream brand opened a permanent flagship there. Her Los Angeles home was destroyed in the Palisades Fire in January 2025.
Conclusion
Tyra Banks and Greg Hayes prove that reinvention is a skill, not a birthright. Banks moved from runways to television studios to boardrooms of her own making, while Hayes moved from an accounting desk to the top of the aerospace industry. No evidence links them personally, and that is fine: each story stands on its own. To keep exploring, read Tyra Banks on Wikipedia and follow her official Instagram, then read Gregory J. Hayes on Wikipedia and BD’s official announcement of his board appointment.
