Rachel Pritzker Hunter is the president and founder of the Pritzker Innovation Fund. ¹ She is a member of the Pritzker political family of billionaires ² that founded and operated Hyatt Hotels and hold deep ties to the Democratic Party as donors and officeholders. ³

She is the daughter of Linda Pritzker, a former member of the Forbes 400 richest Americans list ⁴ and a major Democratic donor. ⁵ Pritzker Hunter has been involved with other left-of-center organizations such as the Democracy Alliance, Media Matters for America and Third Way. ⁶ She is also a major Democratic donor in her own right. ⁷

Career

Rachel Pritzker Hunter is the president and founder of the Pritzker Innovation Fund, a left-of-center grantmaker that gives to think tanks, academic organizations, and advocacy organizations focused on energy and the environment. ⁸ In the early 2000s, Hunter was a founding board member of the Democracy Alliance, ⁹ a collective of left-of-center donors who have been active in orchestrating the activities of various left-of-center organizations and individuals. ¹⁰ She has served as a founding board member of Media Matters for America, ¹¹ a left-of-center critic of conservative media outlets. ¹²

Hunter is the president and director of the Lotus Foundation, a grantmaking organization that has supported Media Matters for America, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, and Progress Now Education. ¹³ She is also the chair of the board of the Breakthrough Institute, ¹⁴ pro-nuclear-energy environmentalist organization co-founded by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger in 2007. It promotes an alternate environmentalist program it calls “ecomodernism” and seeks to help the environment by making low-carbon energy cheap. ¹⁵ Hunter is also the co-chair of the energy program of Third Way, ¹⁶ a left-of-center think tank and advocacy organization. ¹⁷

Political Donations

During the 2008 election, Hunter gave $1.1 million to a left-of-center 527 group called Bring Ohio Back for a series of ads criticizing then-Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), claiming that he was confused when it came to economics. ¹⁸

During the 2009-10 election cycle, Hunter was one of the 10 biggest individual political donors in federal elections. She was one of the only Democratic donors in the top ten. ¹⁹ She has donated to various major Democratic politicians and organizations throughout her life. One of the organizations is the Democratic National Committee, ²⁰ the principal party organ of the Democratic Party.²¹ Pritzker also donated to the presidential campaigns of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ²² and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL). ²³

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