Billionaire Jennifer Pritzker’s decision last month to publicly change her identity from male to female did not come as a surprise to those who mingle in the rarefied and protective world of Chicago’s super-rich.
At some society events, the scion of the Hyatt Hotels fortune previously known as James Pritzker would appear in a black tuxedo, her lapel pinned with military honors, reflecting a long, distinguished career in the U.S. Army and the Illinois National Guard. At some she would appear as a woman, wearing a dress and a headband. And on other occasions, Pritzker, 63, would wear small tokens of her female identity, such as long earrings or blue polka-dotted fingernail polish.
But interviews with those who know her, and information contained in public records, reveal aspects of Jennifer Pritzker’s life and activities in Illinois that are extraordinary, have far-reaching impact and are less widely known.
In her 50s, she camped at a lake in Antarctica, enduring 110 mph winds that knocked tents flat, while conducting scientific research. Her restoration of the Monroe Building downtown was so exacting that she had about 100,000 crackled Rookwood tiles manufactured to perfectly match the originals. And she is among the state’s top Republican donors.
In 2010 alone, according to campaign records, she donated $582,500 to Republican gubernatorial nominee Bill Brady, including two $250,000 checks, despite Brady’s opposition to civil unions and gay marriage — issues Pritzker supports, sources say. Since February 2006, she has given more than $900,000, including two $250,000 checks, to another prominent Republican, Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka. Such large, direct gifts are now prohibited under state law.
“It’s a huge number,” Brady said, adding that he did not suggest it. “We asked for whatever she was comfortable investing in the campaign.”
Pritzker’s retirement in 2001 from the Illinois National Guard with the rank of lieutenant colonel coincided with the start of the 10-year breakup of her family’s dynasty.
Before 2001, Pritzker and her cousins received lump-sum payments and allowances that, although generous to the average person, were quite strict in comparison to the family’s fortune. But beginning that year, after a bitter feud over money and control, the family’s businesses slowly were sold or taken public with the proceeds being split among the cousins. By the end of 2011, each cousin had inherited more than $1 billion and was free to pursue his or her own interests and independent identities.
Among them, Jennifer’s cousin, Penny Pritzker, took the biggest leap into the public eye, moving to Washington this year to become the U.S. commerce secretary. But Penny was already an established Chicago executive, responsible for a large portion of her family’s real estate portfolio.
Emerging from anonymity
Instead, it is Jennifer Pritzker who has traveled the furthest — emerging from almost complete anonymity to become a prominent figure who regularly makes headlines, mostly as a real estate investor and preservationist. Now she has taken the step of changing her identity, a decision her investment firm announced in a short written statement. She declined interview requests.
Until a few years ago, her most well-known endeavor was as the founder of the Pritzker Military Library. The Pritzker library houses military books, periodicals, artifacts, and audio and video archives, including interviews with Medal of Honor recipients. It also hosts regular forums with and speeches from military experts.
But Pritzker also has been collecting worn-down commercial and residential buildings and restoring them to prominence. Among them: The Mayne Stage theater on Morse Avenue; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Emil Bach House on Sheridan Road in Rogers Park; the Cat’s Cradle, a bed-and-breakfast next door; at least 11 apartment buildings in Rogers Park, including the Farcroft Building behind the Emil Bach House; the Monroe Building at South Michigan Avenue and Monroe Street; and two Evanston mansions she is converting into bed-and-breakfasts, one of which is near her own home.
Evanston Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl said she has discussed another potential investment with Pritzker, which she declined to identify. And Kenwood residents have reported Pritzker is considering the purchase of two Wright-designed homes there for use as bed-and-breakfasts. If those sales occur, Pritzker will become one of Chicago’s most prominent protectors of the architect’s legacy.
“When she does something, when she gets committed to it, she really pushes it hard,” said Lewis Collens, the former president of the Illinois Institute of Technology and a member of the board of the Tawani Foundation, Pritzker’s philanthropic arm.
The city’s architecture community has embraced Tawani’s work.
“I can’t recall a job done as well as that building,” Jim Peters, the former president of Landmarks Illinois, said of the Monroe Building. “It was a really abused gem. She brought it back.”
But the reception has not been warm everywhere.
The Evanston City Council, by a vote of 6-3, rejected her bid to buy the Harley Clarke Mansion at 2603 Sheridan Road from the city for $1.2 million and turn it into a boutique hotel. Known as the Evanston Art Center, Pritzker’s proposal failed amid community opposition to turning parkland over to private hands for commercial purposes.
Protests also have erupted in Rogers Park over another Pritzker redevelopment proposal. She wants to tear down an older residence, recently used as a Buddhist meditation center, at 7331 N. Sheridan Road, and erect a 250-car parking garage.
“She does quality work,” said 49th Ward Ald. Joe Moore, who represents Rogers Park and supports the garage. “In addition to the fact that we need additional parking, I want to continue to encourage her to invest in my neighborhood.”
He said the only time he met Pritzker was in 2006 at a dinner party hosted by Jane Feerer, one of Pritzker’s former employees, at the Emil Bach House.
Moore recalled three things about Pritzker from that dinner. She has a passion for the military. She has a passion for bicycles — often biking from her home in Evanston to her office in the Monroe Building. And Moore said she told him she “spent a period of time traveling the country as a hobo, literally riding the rails. In her younger days, she did that for quite a period of time, bumming around the country, doing odds-and-ends jobs. That really stuck in my mind.”
As in hitchhiking?
“No, I recall it was hopping on the back of rail cars, just like back in the Dust Bowl era,” Moore said.
‘Spontaneous and fun’
Pritzker, whom Forbes estimates is worth $1.7 billion, is far from a recluse.
She has spoken at the military library’s annual Liberty Gala; accepted awards, such as patron of the year from the Chicago Architecture Foundation; and hosted NATO summit events at the library. The library also will host her 45th high school reunion this fall.
“He was a very spontaneous and fun guy,” said retired Air Force Col. John Scott Hoff, who serves on the USO of Illinois board with Pritzker. The pair once hopped in Hoff’s red Corvette and went roaring up to a Burger King, he recalled. “I respect him infinitely, because there are a lot of rich people in this world but not a lot who really try to do good things with the blessings of their wealth, and Jim has done that in spades.”
But Pritzker is exceptionally private and often represented in business dealings by two trusted executives, Tawani Enterprises’ Chief Investment Officer Mary Parthe and Chief Operating Officer Sean McGowan.
Many of her current and former employees declined to speak for this profile, one citing a nondisclosure agreement.
Jennifer Pritzker is one of three children from Robert Pritzker’s first marriage to Audrey Ratner, who grew up in Hyde Park and later married into the affluent Ratner family of Cleveland. Robert Pritzker built the industrial conglomerate Marmon Group, which the family gradually sold to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway as part of its breakup. Pritzker’s sister Linda lives in Montana; her other sister, Karen, in Connecticut.
Jennifer Pritzker attended the private Francis W. Parker School, graduating in 1968. She was a military buff since childhood. Her grandfather started collecting military books, a pursuit her father continued. Her late uncle, Jay, served as a naval flight instructor during World War II.
Rising through the ranks
There is a six-year gap between her high school graduation and her enlistment in the military in 1974. She was discharged three years later at the rank of sergeant to enter the Army ROTC program at Loyola University Chicago, where she graduated in 1979 with a degree in history and after graduation was appointed a second lieutenant. She took an air assault course in 1979, learning how to rappel out of helicopters into battle, and a jungle warfare course in 1980, according to the Illinois National Guard. She also did a 13-month tour in Germany in the mid-’80s.
Pritzker’s interest in polar studies began 25 years ago when she led a U.S. Army unit in Alaska, according to a 2009 Field Museum press release. On a 2008 expedition to Antarctica, Pritzker helped set up a meteorological tent that is still in operation, collecting important data on climate conditions, said aquatic ecologist Dale Andersen, who went on the trip.
She transferred to the Army Reserve at the rank of captain in 1985 and then to the Illinois National Guard in 1986, where she led an infantry regiment of about 150 to 200 soldiers, according to Maj. Bradford Leighton of the Illinois National Guard.
One of her public officer evaluation reports from that time reads: “CPT Pritzker has during this period accepted the challenge of assuming command of a disorganized and poorly cared for rifle company. Through his tireless efforts he has stabilized the organization, eliminated non-effective soldiers and developed an effective recruiting and retention program which has revitalized this company. His perseverance and wealth of military knowledge have enabled him to solve problems which others viewed as insurmountable.”
Added Leighton, “Commanders would kill for that kind of evaluation.”
Pritzker, who has three children, is twice divorced, in 1987 and 1997. Both cases have been sealed and are hidden from public view. She formed Tawani Enterprises, a holding company for her various businesses, in 1994.
She dedicated the military library in 2003 to hold her family’s collection of books and artifacts, built over four generations, and to allow herself “continued positive contact with the armed forces,” according to her remarks in a 2007 video announcing the winner of the library’s annual award for lifetime achievement in military writing.
“Warfare is an activity that has always been a part of human civilization,” Pritzker said in the video. “The cost of warfare as we enter the 21st century has become too high to continue as a means of executing state policy, yet it is still with us. How can we hope to eliminate, diminish or effectively manage the worst effects of warfare if we do not study it and try to understand it on all levels?”
This summer, the Tawani Foundation also is helping fund a new study on transgender service in the U.S. military through the California-based Palm Center. The grant is reportedly $1.35 million.
Pritzker’s conservative views spring from her support of the military and her belief in limited government, said Ronald Gidwitz, a former Republican candidate for governor whom Pritzker has supported. She contributed $75,000 to Gidwitz’s super PAC, the New Prosperity Foundation, in 2012, according to OpenSecrets.org.
While running for the 2010 Republican gubernatorial nomination, Dan Proft said he received a $1,500 check in the mail from Pritzker with a handwritten note “that basically said, ‘I like what you’re doing and saying,'” Proft said. He followed up but before Pritzker agreed to meet with him, she e-mailed Proft a “well-crafted” questionnaire. Proft described it as “more robust” than the one the Tribune editorial board uses when weighing endorsements.
“We spoke at length on a range of topics — from military history to research on gender-related issues and local, parochial city and state politics,” said Proft, a WLS-AM 890 morning talk show host. “It was a fascinating conversation, frankly. And an enjoyable one.”
Brady described Pritzker’s priority as getting “government out of the way of business” to foster job growth and investment. Proft added tax policy and reducing the state’s unfunded pension liability to her list of fiscal concerns. Proft said that Pritzker advocated for legalizing civil unions for same-sex couples, a topic on which they disagreed.
“It wasn’t a deal breaker for me, and it wasn’t a deal breaker for her,” Proft said. “It shows her textured layers of thinking. It’s what makes her different than a lot of people.”
Tisdahl, the mayor of Evanston, said Pritzker confirmed her gender identification change in an understated way shortly before she made her public announcement of her name change. They were in a meeting with others in Tisdahl’s office about the unannounced Evanston investment Pritzker is considering.
“Other people (in the meeting) referred to her as Jennifer,” the mayor said. “She said that was her name. There was no more discussion.”
Tisdahl described Pritzker as “passionate, compassionate, a visionary as a preservationist and a business woman. In a diverse and progressive community like Evanston, she fits right in.”
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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