inspired Team
Penny Pritzker: From a Motel Near LAX to Building Inspired Capital
The business lesson began before she could remember it
When Penny Pritzker was six months old, her family moved from Chicago into a motel near Los Angeles International Airport. Her father and his brothers were building a hospitality business at a moment when commercial air travel was changing how Americans moved. The idea was practical: if more people were flying, more people would need places to stay near airports.
In her conversation with Alexa von Tobel on Inspired, Pritzker described growing up around the decisions that made that business possible. Dinner-table conversations were about finding people, training them, providing better service and trying to create something different. Her mother helped plan hotel openings and shape the experiences guests would have. Later, she watched the Hyatt Regency Atlanta atrium concept take the business in a new direction, followed by international expansion.
Pritzker’s childhood taught her two things: the energy of building something, and how people grow when given bigger responsibilities. Both became central to her career.
At 16, she wrote a letter that changed the conversation
Pritzker told von Tobel about a letter she wrote to her grandfather on his 80th birthday. She wanted to know why he talked about business with the boys in the family but not with her. She was interested in business too, and she said so.
At the birthday celebration, he pulled the letter from his jacket pocket and spoke to her privately. He explained that he came from a different time and offered to spend weeks teaching her what he knew. The lessons began with accounting. In his view, a person who could not understand an income statement and balance sheet did not yet understand what was happening inside a company.
The story stayed with Pritzker not just because she learned the language of business. She had asked to be taken seriously, and someone whose assumptions were different had been willing to listen.
Her first company came from caring for her grandmother
After completing her education and spending time learning within the family businesses, Pritzker wanted to build something of her own. She had been helping care for her grandmother and had seen how difficult it was to find reliable support for an older person who needed both care and human connection.
At 27, she proposed developing a senior living business. She knew hospitality but had not previously built a company. She described making mistakes, including an early hire who was not suited to the role. She had to ask for help navigating the situation. Those experiences shaped an approach to leadership that valued practical judgment and continued learning over the appearance of certainty.
Pritzker went on to found Vi Senior Living and co-found other businesses, including The Parking Spot and Artemis Real Estate Partners. These company affiliations are supported by her official Inspired Capital biography; the interview itself focuses most closely on the beginnings of her entrepreneurial life.
A different kind of building in public service
Pritzker later served as United States Secretary of Commerce during the Obama administration. In the podcast, she remembered the first time she walked through the White House without an escort and felt the magnitude of the responsibility that came with her role.
She described traveling around the country to ask business leaders what made it harder for them to grow and hire, and working through complex issues involving trade, technology and international cooperation. One initiative she discussed was the Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship, a program that helped bring her and von Tobel together. Later, Pritzker also served in a role focused on Ukraine's economic recovery and spoke about the ingenuity she saw among Ukrainians working under extraordinary pressure.
From a shared belief to Inspired Capital
Pritzker and von Tobel connected through a shared conviction that building businesses could solve consequential problems and create opportunities for people. That relationship eventually led them to co-found Inspired Capital in 2019. The firm describes itself as a high-conviction early-stage investor and has since expanded its work across sectors including healthcare, defense, fintech, AI, robotics and other emerging fields.
In their October 2026 conversation, Pritzker explained why the culture mattered as much to her as the investments. She spoke about preparation, responsiveness, care for founders and responsibility to the firm's investors. Her career had included hospitality, operating businesses and government, but the recurring theme was remarkably consistent: the best organizations do more than function. They help people build, grow and solve problems that matter.
What her career can teach founders
Pritzker's story does not suggest that great entrepreneurs follow a single path. It suggests that building begins with a willingness to notice a problem, ask for an opportunity, seek help when needed and accept the responsibility of making decisions that affect other people. For the founders who choose to build ambitious companies, those habits often matter long before the world sees the result.