Breakthrough Dialogues

How can environmental philanthropy have the greatest impact? Rachel Pritzker has spent a lot of time thinking about this question. As founder and president of the Pritzker Innovation Fund, and an ecomodernist thought leader in her own right, Rachel has focused on US innovation policy, advanced nuclear power, and energy for human development in emerging economies. She challenges conventional wisdom to get complete clarity: what, exactly, is the problem, and what are the underlying drivers? What solutions are being overlooked? Instead of staying gridlocked in old battles, Rachel seeks new ideas that are less politically rigid and offer space for bipartisan action. While Rachel Pritzker is a signatory of the Ecomodernist Manifesto and chair of the Breakthrough Institute’s board, she wasn’t always an ecomodernist. In fact, she tells us that one of her earliest memories is of protesting nuclear energy; she grew up on a goat farm, with parents devoted to the back-to-the-land movement and a general skepticism of tec