The Hyatt Heiress Funding JVP And IfNotNow
Regan Pritzker built the Kataly Foundation with $445 million from her side of the family. Some of it flows to the two Jewish anti-Zionist groups behind the campus encampments.
Regan Pritzker built the Kataly Foundation with $445 million from her side of the family. Some of it flows to the two Jewish anti-Zionist groups behind the campus encampments.
Regan Pritzker chairs the board of a $457 million foundation that funds Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, the Movement for Black Lives, and Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity. She is the daughter of Nicholas and Susan Pritzker. The extended Pritzker family — heirs to the Hyatt hotel fortune — is worth a combined $32.5 billion. The current governor of Illinois is her first cousin once removed.
The foundation is called Kataly.
Pritzker co-founded Kataly in 2018 alongside her continuing role as board co-president of the older Pritzker-family vehicle, the Libra Foundation. Kataly’s initial $445 million capitalization came from JL Special LLC, a Nevada corporate entity that listed Nicholas J. Pritzker — Regan’s father — among its managers. By 2020, the foundation reported $457 million in assets, making it, at its founding, larger than the entire endowment of Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation.
Kataly’s stated program areas are the Restorative Economies Fund, the Environmental Justice Resourcing Collective, and Mindfulness and Healing Justice. The grantee list is what makes the foundation a Jewish business story.
The Heritage Foundation’s 2024 report mapping the financial ecosystem behind the post-October 7 campus encampments identifies Kataly as a funder of Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, the Movement for Black Lives, Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, and Grassroots Global Justice. JVP and IfNotNow were the two principal Jewish-identified organizations behind the encampments at Columbia, Harvard, MIT, NYU, and elsewhere. Both are explicitly anti-Zionist. Both have formally endorsed the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. JVP, in January 2025, agreed to pay $677,634 to settle U.S. federal allegations of fraud relating to grant misuse.
The Libra Foundation, where Pritzker is board co-president, sits in the same orbit. Politico reported in 2024 that Libra funds the Tides Foundation, which fiscally sponsors the Adalah Justice Project — the U.S. arm of the Israeli anti-Zionist legal NGO Adalah. Rolling Stone produced a narrow-frame rebuttal arguing Libra’s direct Tides grants had not been earmarked for the Adalah Justice Project. Susan Pritzker, Regan’s mother, separately sits as treasurer of the Solidaire Network, which publicly lists the Adalah Justice Project as a “movement partner.” The Solidaire seat was not addressed in the Rolling Stone rebuttal.
When the Politico story broke, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker — Susan and Nicholas’s nephew — dismissed it at a Springfield press conference as “a completely false story.” He cited the Rolling Stone rebuttal. He did not address Solidaire. He did not address Kataly.
Inside Philanthropy profiled Regan Pritzker in 2021 as a Pritzker heir “pursuing the democratization of wealth.” She has been an open and consistent donor to what she publicly describes as the “Just Transition movement” and the “principles of solidarity, taking leadership in organizing progressive wealth holders.” There is no concealment in her public record.
The Pritzker name carries an unusual weight in American Jewish life. Penny Pritzker served as U.S. Commerce Secretary under Barack Obama and is now chair of the Harvard Corporation. Tom Pritzker, her brother, chairs Hyatt. JB Pritzker is governor of Illinois and a frequently mentioned Democratic presidential candidate. The family endowed the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago, the Pritzker Military Museum, and Tel Aviv University’s Pritzker Family Building. The family identifies, publicly and consistently, as Jewish.
That is the context Regan Pritzker’s $457 million foundation operates inside.
Regan Pritzker did not respond to a request for comment. The Kataly Foundation did not respond to a request for comment on the record about its giving to Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow.
