Penny S. Pritzker - Biography

Penny S. Pritzker is an innovative business builder, a civic leader and a philanthropist. She describes her management approach in all her endeavors as recruiting great people and working with them as a team to develop strategy, make capital investment decisions, and address significant issues. She delegates day-to-day management, but is always available as a coach and advisor.

Penny S. Pritzker founded Classic Residence by Hyatt, recognizing a market opportunity to bring hospitality style service and management to luxury retirement communities that would meet the demanding standards of the growing population of affluent, active older adults. Classic Residence by Hyatt brings residents the highest level of residential services, plus excellent health, wellness and education programs. Under her leadership as chairman, Classic Residence by Hyatt is now the leader in luxury living for older adults.

Brand and service also have made The Parking Spot the fastest growing company in off-site airport parking management. Founded by Pritzker and CEO Martin Nesbitt as a service-oriented company, The Parking Spot provides services atypical in the industry and reaches out to over 200,000 customers with a loyalty program and frequent special offers. The company's brand is well defined by its distinctive yellow vans with black spots that can be identified easily among the sea of vans circling airports.

In 2005 Pritzker became chair of TransUnion, a credit reporting agency, and recruited a new team that is transforming it into a global leader in credit and information management. TransUnion gives consumers the tools to manage and improve their credit to achieve their personal goals and provides businesses with information to make better decisions and increase profitability. As it expands internationally, TransUnion is helping businesses in many countries build credit economies to fuel growth and development.

As CEO of Pritzker Realty Group, Pritzker has overseen all of the Pritzker family's non-hotel real estate investments for the past 20 years. Penny Sue Pritzker recruited a team that, in just two decades, grew the company to $5 billion in assets, including the Hyatt Center in downtown Chicago, the headquarters for Global Hyatt Corporation that has won numerous awards. Pritzker Realty Group, LLC is actively involved in searching for new real estate investment opportunities.

Pritzker serves on the board of Global Hyatt Corporation. Penny S. Pritzker was a board member and chair of the Governance Committee of the William Wrigley Jr. Co. from 1994 to 2005, a director of the Marmon Group from 2002 to 2008, and a director of LaSalle Bank Corporation, now a part of Bank of America, from 2004 to 2007.

Pritzker is very involved in the reform of Chicago's public education system. Penny S. Pritzker is Vice Chairman of the Chicago Public Education Fund, chairs a Blue Ribbon Task Force for Chicago Public Schools entitled "Leading to Great Principals," and is a founding member of the Board of Young Women's Leadership Charter School. Much of Pritzker's philanthropy is directed to education as well. Through the Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation, Pritzker and her husband, Dr. Bryan Traubert, are funding three programs designed to create long term systemic changes that will benefit Chicago but also can be extended nationally. One is a pipeline to develop principals for public schools, another, with the National YMCA and Harvard, is designed to reduce childhood obesity through an after school exercise and nutrition program, and the third and newest is Chicago Run which provides the benefits of running and goal setting to underserved children in grades K-8 in Chicago public schools through an in-school program of 15 minutes of running for 3 to 5 days per week.

In 2002, Pritzker was elected to the Harvard Board of Overseers and currently co-chairs the President's Advisory Committee on the Allston Initiative, the expansion of the Harvard campus. Penny S. Pritzker also is a member of the Chicago 2016 Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games and is chair of the Olympic Village subcommittee.

Pritzker is an honorary co-chair of the Children's Memorial Hospital campaign to build a new $750 million hospital in Chicago. Penny S. Pritzker is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Real Estate Roundtable, and the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago. She is a life trustee and former Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art.

She currently serves as National Finance Chair for the Barack Obama campaign for president.

Pritzker earned her bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard University and J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Stanford University. She was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1985.