Liesel Simmons

Liesel Pritzker Simmons is an American investor, philanthropist, and former child actress, and an heiress to the Hyatt Hotels / Pritzker family fortune. Under the stage name Liesel Matthews, she starred as Sara Crewe in the 1995 film *A Little Princess* and as the U.S. president's daughter, Alice Marshall, in the 1997 thriller *Air Force One*. In 2002 she filed a landmark suit against her father and cousins claiming she had been unfairly excluded from the family fortune; the litigation contributed to the breakup of the Pritzker empire and reportedly resulted in a roughly $500 million payout and control of her own trust. She studied African History at Columbia University in New York City.

In 2012, Liesel and her husband, Ian Simmons, founded Blue Haven Initiative after systematically reassessing their portfolios against ESG criteria — building one of the first family offices created with impact investing as its core mission and focus. As Co-Founder and Principal, she serves as an investment strategist overseeing a diversified, "total-portfolio" approach that spans traditional public equities, private equity, private credit, real assets, direct venture investments, and philanthropic programs. Blue Haven has become one of the most active family offices in impact investing, working with more than 30 fund managers plus numerous direct deals.

Beyond Blue Haven, Pritzker Simmons co-founded the IDP Foundation, a Chicago-based private foundation focused on universal primary education, whose IDP Rising Schools Program supports hundreds of low-cost private schools in underserved regions through microfinance networks. She sits on boards and investment committees including ImpactAssets, Synergos, Toniic, and The ImPact (a network of families committed to impact), and she is a frequent speaker on next-generation wealth and impact investing.

• Total-portfolio impact: Pioneered aligning an entire family-office balance sheet — not a carve-out — with social and environmental impact while seeking competitive, risk-adjusted returns.
• Proof unlocks capital: In her words, "if you can show that you can thoughtfully and profitably have an impact portfolio, then that unlocks deep pools of capital for things that are important."
• Early-stage in emerging markets: Blue Haven's venture activity backs early-stage businesses serving underserved communities in Sub-Saharan Africa across clean energy, financial services, healthcare, and edtech.
• Patient, long-horizon capital: She stresses the "luxury of being a long-term investor" and won't pivot strategy on short-term politics, believing "in the long term, policies are going to make economic sense."
• Deepening impact appetite: Blue Haven has evolved "from seeking strictly risk-adjusted market rates of return to also deploy in the deeper end of the impact pool," and she notes "the more market-rate impact investing that family offices do, the hungrier they are for higher impact stuff."
• Systems and policy, not just capital: A vocal advocate that "capital alone is not enough to drive systemic change" — she pairs investing with policy/lobbying work and is pointed on tax reform: "I don't want anybody to talk to me about systems if they're not willing to talk about taxes."