There Are 7 Openly LGBT Billionaires (Combined Net Worth $16B)

Forbes magazine reveals that there are now seven openly LGBT billionaires in the world. Previously, I had blogged about the openly transgender billionaire, Jennifer Pritzker. At that time I had only identified three billionaires: David Geffen, Peter Thiel, Jon Stryker and Pritzker. But now they have been joined by Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana (the owners and creators of the Dolce Gabbana brand) as well as Michael Kors.

Not surprisingly, since men dominate the list of 1645 billionaires in the world, there are currently no openly lesbian billionaires.

For those of you counting at home, this means that just 0.7% of the world's known billionaires are openly LGBT.

First Openly Transgender Billionaire Identified

James Pritzker has announced a name change to Jennifer Natalya Pritzker

Forbes magazine is the primary source for information about the world's billionaires and recently they have identified a milestone: the existence of the first openly transgender billionaire, Jennifer Natalya Pritzker.

Jennifer Natalya Pritzker, formally known as James, is one of 11 billionaire members of the extended Pritzker family on the FORBES list. They sold a majority stake in industrial conglomerate Marmon Holdings to Warren Buffett‘s Berkshire Hathaway  for $4.5 billion in 2007 and continue to control publicly-listed Hyatt Hotels. The heiress has an estimated net worth of $1.7 billion. 

[...] 

Pritzker is a retired Army lieutenant colonel with 11 years active duty, followed by 16 years in the U.S. National Guard. Earlier this year, she gave $1.35 million to the Palm Center to create the Transgender Military Service Initiative. The goal of the project is “to sponsor state-of-the-art scholarship on transgender military service, and to enhance the quality of public dialogue.”

As far as I can tell, there are only three known openly gay billionaires: David Geffen ($5.5b), Peter Thiel ($3b) and Jon Stryker ($1.2b). Regardless, this is an interesting milestone representative of the diversity of the LGBT community. "We are everywhere, indeed!"