Penny Pritzker

Penny Pritzker
Official portrait, 2013
38th United States Secretary of Commerce
In office June 26, 2013 – January 20, 2017
President	Barack Obama
Deputy	Patrick D. Gallagher (acting) Bruce H. Andrews
Preceded by	John Bryson
Succeeded by	Wilbur Ross
Personal details
Born	Penny Sue Pritzker (1959-05-02) May 2, 1959 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Bryan Traubert
Children	2
Parent	Donald Pritzker (father)
Relatives	Pritzker family
Education	Harvard University (BA) Stanford University (JD, MBA)

Penny Sue Pritzker (born May 2, 1959) is an American billionaire heiress, businesswoman and civic leader who served as the 38th United States secretary of commerce in the Obama administration from 2013 to 2017. She was confirmed by a Senate vote of 97–1.

Pritzker is a member of the prominent Pritzker family and was involved with the family business empire from a young age. She was eventually appointed as one of three successors to her uncle, Jay Pritzker. She is the founder of PSP Partners, PSP Capital Partners, and Pritzker Realty Group, and co-founder of Artemis Real Estate Partners and Inspired Capital. She is on the board of Microsoft and chair of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. As of October 2021, Forbes estimated her net worth at US$3.2 billion. In 2009, Forbes named Pritzker one of the 100 most powerful women in the world. She is the sister of J. B. Pritzker, the current governor of Illinois.

Before entering government service, Pritzker had been involved in many Chicago organizations, including the Chicago Board of Education, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, as well as her own foundation, the Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation. A friend of the Obama family since their Chicago years, Pritzker was an early supporter of Obama's presidential candidacy.

From 2021 to 2022, she was a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). From September 2023 to August 2024, she was the U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine's Economic Recovery.

Early life and education

Pritzker was born in Chicago in 1959, the daughter of Sue (née Sandel) and Donald Pritzker. She is a member of the Pritzker family of Chicago, a wealthy and influential Jewish business family. Donald was one of the co-founders of Hyatt Hotels. He moved the family to Atherton, California southeast of San Mateo, where business for Hyatt began to grow. Pritzker has two younger brothers, Tony (b. 1961) and J. B. (Jay Robert b. 1965), the incumbent governor of Illinois.

As a child, Penny Pritzker accompanied her father to the hotels and checked the cleanness of the ladies restrooms. In 1972, Pritzker's father died suddenly of a heart attack and her mother began battling depression. Penny had to act as a caregiver at times for her mother and younger brothers. At age 16, Penny wrote a letter to A.N. Pritzker, her grandfather and the head of the family business empire, asking why he talked business with the men in the family and not with her. Realizing her interest in business, her grandfather provided her with a summer course in accounting.

Penny Pritzker attended Castilleja School in Palo Alto, California until 1977. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in economics from Harvard College in 1981. Pritzker returned to school, earning both a Juris Doctor and an MBA from Stanford University in 1985.

Pritzker family businesses

Early ventures

After earning her degrees, Pritzker joined the Pritzker organization encouraged by her cousin Nick Pritzker. In 1987, she founded Classic Residence by Hyatt, later renamed Vi, upscale housing for seniors as an alternative to nursing homes. The project struggled at first, losing $40 million in the first 18 months, but turned around after changes in marketing and management. In 1991, Prtizker's uncle, Jay Pritzker, who led the Pritzker family businesses named Pritzker as the director of the family's' non-hotel landholdings. With that appointment, Pritzker created the Pritzker Realty Group, which developed apartment buildings, shopping centers, and the Baldwin Park neighborhood in Orlando, Florida.

Superior Bank

From 1991 to 1994, Pritzker was chairperson of the Hinsdale, Illinois-based Superior Bank of Chicago, in which Jay Pritzker had purchased a 50% stake from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, who had taken over the bank when it failed. In 1993, the bank "embarked on a business strategy of significant growth into subprime home mortgages", according to a report by the United States Treasury Department. In 2000, it became clear the bank was faltering. For months near the end of 2000, the Pritzkers tried to work out a recapitalization plan. In July 2001, the FDIC seized the bank after the recapitalization could not be resolved. Subsequently, the Pritzker family reached an agreement with regulators to pay $460 million.

According to the FDIC, by 2011, the uninsured depositors of Superior had each received 81% of their uninsured monies, in addition to the $100,000 each previously received of their insured amount. Industry experts have criticized the Pritzkers in regard to Superior. Consumer advocates and government investigators asserted Superior "engaged in unsound financial activities and predatory lending practices". Responding to The Wall Street Journal, Pritzker noted she had no ownership in the bank, either direct or indirect, and that the bank's reasons for failure "were complex, including changes in accounting practices, auditing failures, reversals in regulatory positions and general economic conditions". She said the bank complied with "fair lending laws" and ethical business practices. A 2001 Business Week article described the bank's other owner, Alvin Dworman, as the more dominant partner in its operation as a result of agreements made by Jay Pritzker. Quoted in The New York Times, a Pritzker family friend observed Pritzker was trapped in a deal of her uncle's making: "Penny got sucked into this… this was really the legacy of Jay."

Leadership and dissolution

In 1995, Pritzker was named as one of three successors to the retiring Jay Pritzker besides his son Tom and his cousin Nick. Tom was named the official head of the businesses, Pritzker and Nick were each named vice-chairman. Together, the three were to oversee the family assets. Jay intended to keep the family business together, devising a system of trusts that would allow individual family members to receive money from the trusts to meet their needs; however, the family's wealth was to be primarily maintained in the trusts to grow the businesses and fund philanthropic endeavors. The Pritzker business empire contained over 200 businesses and was valued at $15 billion.

After Jay Pritzker's death in 1999, other family members challenged Tom, Nick, and Penny Pritzker's control of the businesses in multiple lawsuits. Penny's brothers joined in one of the lawsuits. In 2001, they decided to sell family assets to allow eleven cousins to receive a share, dissolving the family's business ties. Disentangling the family's business interests took nearly a decade. The family sold its controlling stake in the Marmon Group to Berkshire Hathaway for $4.5 billion in 2008. The Pritzker Realty Group sold Parking Spot, an airport parking management business Penny co-founded in 1998, to Green Courte Partners LLC for $360 million in 2011.

Beginning in 2005, Penny Pritzker served as non-executive chairman of TransUnion. In 2009, she co-founded Artemis Real Estate Partners LLC, a real estate investment management company, with Deborah Harmon. In 2011, she founded an investment office, PSP Capital Partners. Altogether, Pritzker started five companies before joining the federal government.

Government and political involvement

Pritzker's friendship with Barack Obama and his family dates back to the 1990s when he was a senior lecturer at the law school at The University of Chicago. Pritzker met Obama at a Chicago YMCA where her son participated in a basketball program coached by Obama's brother-in-law Craig Robinson. Obama and his family were frequent guests at Pritzker's Lake Michigan vacation home. She was an early supporter of Obama's political career, helping to finance his 2004 Senate campaign. Early in the Democratic presidential primary, Pritzker's financing helped Obama's candidacy survive when Obama was trailing Hillary Clinton in the polls. Pritzker remained a major fundraiser for Obama during the 2008 Democratic primary and raised millions overall for his White House bid. She served as the national finance chair of Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Under her direction, the campaign reached out to small donors. Pritzker also hosted more lavish fundraisers as part of her effort to raise money.

After Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election, CNN reported that Pritzker was president-elect Obama's top choice for Commerce Secretary. However, Pritzker took herself out of the running. According to the Chicago Tribune, she withdrew her name from consideration "due to obligations to her family, for whom she was still overseeing billions in assets, and the financial crisis, which was putting some of those assets at risk". As a result of her public support for President Obama, Pritzker found herself the target of labor groups for Hyatt Hotels' practices. The president of Unite Here cited her connection to Obama as a reason why the group expected her to use better labor practices as the group staged demonstrations against Pritzker.

Pritzker was a member of the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. She also served on the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Although she was less active in the 2012 Obama campaign than she had been four years prior, she served as national co-chair of Obama for America 2012. She was also on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank focused on world affairs and U.S. foreign policy. She was appointed by President Joe Biden as U.S. special representative for Ukraine's economic recovery in 2023.

Secretary of Commerce

Pritzker with President Barack Obama and Mike Froman in the Oval Office, May 2, 2013

Secretary Pritzker addresses international media in Tokyo on October 21, 2014.

Pritzker was nominated as United States Secretary of Commerce by President Barack Obama on May 2, 2013. To avoid conflicts of interest, Pritzker agreed to sell her interest in at least 221 companies and resign from 158 entities, including the Hyatt board of directors and the Chicago Board of Education. Later that month, on May 23, the Senate held its confirmation hearing, which covered a variety of topics. Although Pritzker's family business dealings had been a target of Republican criticism when Obama announced her nomination, only three questions at the hearing related to her family. Pritzker was confirmed by the full Senate on June 25, by a vote of 97 to 1. Pritzker was sworn in as secretary on June 26, 2013.

Among Pritzker's priorities was the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a proposed trade agreement that would have been the "largest regional trade agreement in history". Pritzker supported the TPP as a way to provide market access to U.S. businesses and as a way for the U.S. to set the standards for trade. Leading up the 2016 presidential election, in which both major party candidates openly opposed the TPP, Pritzker and other Obama officials continued to push for the TPP's passage in Congress. Ultimately, Congress failed to pass the TPP bill.

Pritzker named a Digital Economy Board of Advisors, which included tech industry CEOs and academics, to advise on policy. Pritzker also expanded the IP attache program, which helps the tech industry protect their intellectual property abroad. As secretary, Pritzker also created the Commerce Data Advisory Council to identify priorities for the Department of Commerce, a prolific publisher of data intended to allow businesses to plan and innovate. Pritzker served as the lead negotiator for the United States in the E.U.–U.S. Privacy Shield, an agreement governing how companies transfer digital data from Europe to the United States.

After President Obama's announcement that the United States would move towards normalizing relations with Cuba, Pritzker traveled to Cuba. Although Obama's change in policy did not end the U.S. trade embargo, since ending the embargo required an act of Congress, Pritzker met with Cuban trade ministers and other officials to discuss the changing relationship between the two countries and to lay the groundwork for more economic involvement.

Following her tenure as secretary, Pritzker returned to PSP and the private sector.

U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine's Economic Recovery

On September 14, 2023, Penny Pritzker was appointed by President Biden as the U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine's Economic Recovery. In this role, she works with the Ukrainian government, the G7, the EU, international financial institutions, international partners and the US private sector.

During her first visit to Kyiv in her new role, Pritzker met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the prime minister and government officials, the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada and American business.

Civic and philanthropic activities

Pritzker was a member of the Chicago Board of Education and is past chair of the Chicago Public Education Fund. She was advisory board chair of Skills for America's Future (SAF), a policy initiative of the Aspen Institute. She is also a former chair of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. In 2002, Pritzker was elected to a six-year term on the 30-person Harvard Board of Overseers. In 2018, she was elected to the Harvard Corporation, the 12-person group which governs Harvard University. Pritzker donated $100 million to Harvard in 2021 for the construction of a new economics department building. She became the first woman to serve in the Corporation's top role, that of the senior fellow, in 2022. After Harvard president Claudine Gay's resignation, Pritzker faced criticism and calls to resign as senior fellow from some prominent Harvard alumni and donors for the Corporation's handling of the events.

Pritzker and her husband, Bryan Traubert, have their own foundation named the Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation. The foundation focuses on physical activity for young people and increasing economic opportunity in Chicago. Among their initiatives were a $5 million donation to converting grass soccer fields to easier-to-maintain turf and a $1 million donation to repair tennis courts around Chicago. The Pritzkers also established ChicagoRun, a program that prepares Chicago-area children to run their first 5k race.

In 2012 Chicago magazine named her one of the 100 most powerful Chicagoans. On March 26, 2014, Elle honored Pritzker, with others, at the Italian Embassy in the United States during its annual "Women in Washington Power List". In February 2018, Pritzker was elected to succeed Harvey V. Fineberg as chairperson of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, taking effect May 2018.

In March 2020, Pritzker set up the Illinois COVID-19 Response Fund, to assist non-profit organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic, after receiving a call from her brother, Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker. The siblings announced the creation of the fund with $23 million in start up money on March 24, 2020, six days after Governor Pritzker's request. Pritzker and her husband contributed $1.5 million of the initial sum.

Personal life

Pritzker is married to ophthalmologist Bryan Traubert, with whom she has two children. Although her relationship with her brothers became strained following the family business restructuring, they eventually reconciled, and Penny expressed support for the idea of younger brother J. B. running for office in 2017.

In the 1980s, after training for six months, Pritzker completed her first Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii in 12 hours. She has since completed multiple triathlons and marathons.

See also

• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
• List of female United States Cabinet members
• List of Jewish United States Cabinet members
• List of people and organisations named in the Paradise Papers
• Office of Thrift Supervision

External links

• About Secretary Penny Pritzker at the United States Department of Commerce
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Money Maven
• The Forbes 400 – #135 Penny Pritzker 2007 profile
• The Harvard Crimson – Penny Pritzker Archived September 22, 2008, at the Wayback Machine Madeline W. Lissner, June 5, 2006
• SEC filings
• Personal website