Executive Chairman of the Board, Hyatt Hotels
Search every verified Thomas Pritzker interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Thomas Pritzker, executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels and chairman of the Pritzker Organization, has continued to discuss his work in business, philanthropy, and Himalayan archaeology. In a 2023 podcast interview, he described his archaeological contributions as being "the tip of the spear," bringing back information for professional scholars, and noted that he has published articles but does not consider himself a scholar. He also discussed his approach to understanding history by "following the money," applying a business perspective to analyze why a Tibetan king imported Buddhism as a strategy for power rather than military force. Pritzker has emphasized the importance of empathy in business, stating that "empathy is a critical business skill set," and has articulated his "Pritzker corollary" that the three critical factors in the hotel business are "people, people, and people." In other appearances, Pritzker has spoken about his early experiences conducting business in China, beginning with his first trip in 1976, and has reflected on the challenges of operating there, including navigating state-owned partnerships and the lack of profit motive in the early 1980s. He has also discussed his philanthropic work, including the establishment of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, which he described as an opportunity to "turn discoveries into inventions for the betterment of mankind." At the 2019 Pritzker Architecture Prize ceremony, he invoked Virgil's phrase "there are tears in things of stone" in reference to the Notre-Dame fire, and praised the resilience of that year's laureate, Arata Isozaki.
“I always tell my kids if you can just have zillions of experiences that's going to improve your judgment and I don't know whether this is a theory of convenience or accurate but I think all of these experiences are really about life not about just the Himalayan experience.”
“In the business world to me the scarce resource is not IQ it's judgment and I've always tried to figure out how do you train for judgment what are the correlations for judgment and my hypothesis I have no idea if it's accurate or not is that experience is the breeding ground for judgment.”
“I find aspects of their philosophy have been super important to my life so I've ended up in situations of pretty extreme stress and adversity in the business world and in one such situation it basically was a 10-year run of being under attack and then in that situation having lived in the Buddhist Himalayas for quite a...”
“The only thing all of us can control is our attitude completely own it and nobody has any rights to it and if you can make that malleable to a situation or to some adversity if you can begin to look at that in a certain way and have it make sense to you all of a sudden you get up in the morning and say you know what th...”
“I think we hit a window that won't exist in 10 years now it'll be over that way so they're modernized they're getting cell phones they're really much more aware of the outside world than they were when we were there that's both good and bad I guess.”
“You're talking about significant number of degrees of climate change the other thing we see is we frequently would use a snow bridge to get across a river those are completely gone these are glaciers so they're permanent snow bridges and the river carves a little tunnel underneath and so you could just walk over the ri...”
“Follow the money if you want to know it's the Willie Sutton theory of History follow the money so I could never understand exactly why this King was so compelled to bring Buddhism to Tibet so in the same area where the temple was one day we're standing up on a most magical powerful Bluff overlooking the confluence of t...”
“He used the church as his strategy for power as opposed to kingship so you can see this journey has taken us on fantastic sort of both intellectual and physical discovery that's really added Margo and I do this together she's part parcel of all of this and it's just enriched our life enormously.”
“In our younger days we had a few interesting experiences although I'll tell you in the business world to me the scarce resource is not IQ it's judgment and I've always tried to figure out how do you train for judgment what are the correlations for judgment and my hypothesis is that experience is the breeding ground for...”
“I'm a business guy so the answer is follow the money if you want to know — it's the Willie Sutton theory of History.”
“Follow the money — I could never understand exactly why this King was so compelled to bring Buddhism to Tibet.”
“What he did is he used his goal to import Buddhism — Buddhism has to be a very expensive religion because you got appearances and monasteries — he then renounced his throne and became the head lama.”
“In effect he used the church as his strategy for power as opposed to kingship.”
“I have this day job that gets in the way of what's really important.”
“A friend of mine who's a serious scholar said here's what you do: you publish bits and pieces in magazine articles and then when you get sold they don't want you anymore in the office you can just assemble those, call it a book.”
The Himalayas are a massive mountain range in Central Asia that inspire awe and respect in anyone who visits. Humans have ...
Tom Pritzker of Hyatt Hotels and the Pritzker Organization delves into his very quantifiable method for discerning humanity's past.
Pritzker Organization chairman Tom Pritzker discusses how his archaeological contributions may one day make up a book he ...
Hank welcomes Tom Pritzker (Executive Chairman of Hyatt Hotels) to Straight Talk. They discuss Pritzker's wide-ranging interests ...
Remarks by Tom J. Pritzker, MBA'76, JD'76, executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels Corp. This event was part of a larger celebration ...
Tom Pritzker, Chairman, and CEO, The Pritzker Organization; Executive Chairman, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, welcomes attendees ...
... Principal, RiceHadleyGates LLC Stephen Orlins, President, National Committee on US-China Relations Tom Pritzker, Executive ...
Tom Pritzker, Chairman Hyatt Foundation delivers a speech at the 2019 Pritzker Prize ceremony held in Versailles, May 2019.
In November, 2018, BFI hosted the University of Chicago's annual US-China Forum, focusing on China and the Global Economy.
The presenters describe their personal experience with opening businesses in China, and reflect on the role that business ...
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