Rachel Pritzker

Rachel Pritzker is founder and president of the Pritzker Innovation Fund, which supports the development and advancement of paradigm-shifting ideas to address wicked problems, including focus areas in US liberal democracy and climate and energy. She is chair of the Democracy Funders Network and co-founder of Patriots and Pragmatists. She currently chairs the boards of the Breakthrough Institute, Third Way and the Energy for Growth Hub. As a founding board member of the Democracy Alliance in the early 2000s, Rachel Pritzker joined other donors to win hearts and minds for the progressive cause. Later, she moved away from electoral politics to found the Pritzker Innovation Fund. As we reported in a piece on Rachel’s work, its mission is to find innovative solutions to “wicked problems,” mainly to do with climate and energy. The Pritzker Innovation Fund is guided by a strong belief in the power of new ideas and research to achieve change. Rachel Pritzker’s approach to grantmaking mimics, in a way, conservative efforts to bankroll policy thought leadership. One major grant recipient is the Breakthrough Institute, a think tank Rachel has long been involved with, that focuses on addressing global environmental problems. She is also an adherent of “ecomodernism,” arguing that economic growth need not be at odds with environmental stewardship.