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Jon Lloyd Stryker (born c. 1958) is an American architect, philanthropist, and billionaire heir to the Stryker Corporation medical technology company fortune. Stryker is the founder and president of the Arcus Foundation, which primarily supports great ape conservation efforts and LGBT social justice, and has awarded over $500 million in grants. The threatened colobine species Rhinopithecus strykeri is named after him. According to Forbes, Stryker's net worth is estimated at $5.3 billion.Forbes (April 10, 2025). Jon Stryker. $5.3B Real Time Net Worth.
Stryker earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in biology from Kalamazoo College in 1982. He now serves on the college's Board of Trustees and was the recipient of the college's 2010 Distinguished Service Award.
He also received a Master of Architecture degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
Stryker is a founding board member of Greenleaf Trust, a privately owned bank in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Stryker is the founder and president of the Arcus Foundation, a private international philanthropic organization primarily supporting great ape conservation efforts and LGBT causes, as well as other social justice endeavors.
In 2024, Stryker was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Speaking to Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors in 2008, Stryker explained that the Arcus Foundation's two primary areas of focus, while seemingly unrelated, are bound by the common themes of compassion and justice:
In 2016, Jon Stryker and his sister Pat Stryker each gave $5 million to the Equal Justice Initiative to help fund a national memorial to victims of racial lynching in the United States. The siblings made the donation in honor of their late father, Lee Stryker.
In 2017, Stryker donated $1.275 Million to expand Virgin Islands National Park with the purchase of an 11.8-acre property on St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands.
Stryker is a donor of The New York Community Trust, which announced in 2020 that it would donate $75 million to the city's social services and cultural non-profit organizations that were affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Stryker is a Platinum Council donor (giving US$50,000 or more in annual contributions) to the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund,Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, 2009 Annual Report a national organization that works to support the candidacies of openly LGBT officials at all levels of government.
In 2015, Stryker spearheaded, together with Jurek Wajdowicz, the ongoing international series of LGBT-themed photography books published by The New Press.
In October 2019, Styker donated $2 million to Spelman College for the first ever queer studies chair at an HBCU (Historically black colleges and universities).
Stryker is a founding board member of the Ol Pejeta Wildlife Conservancy, a 90,000-acre not-for-profit wildlife conservancy in central Kenya's Laikipia County. The land, formerly a game reserve and ranching area, was purchased in 2003 by U.K-based conservation organization Fauna and Flora International through a major donation by Stryker's Arcus Foundation.
He is also the co-founder and Board Chair of Save the Chimps, the world's largest chimpanzee sanctuary located in Fort Pierce, Florida. Stryker funded the purchase of a 190-acre abandoned grapefruit grove in 1997 and oversaw its transformation into a modern sanctuary, which today provides lifetime care for more than 250 chimpanzees rescued from biomedical research laboratories.
In 2023, Stryker joined the Jane Goodall Legacy Foundation's Council for Hope.
Stryker also makes contributions in support of the college's study abroad programs and enrollment diversity efforts. In 2008, he established a $5.6 million grant to fund the tuition and financial support of 50 Posse Scholars from the Los Angeles Unified School District. The grant, which supported the enrollment of 10 Posse Scholars in five consecutive academic classes at Kalamazoo College, was made in partnership with the Posse Foundation, a national organization that pairs high-performing public high school students from underrepresented groups in higher education with full, four-year academic scholarships at colleges and universities throughout the country. In 2001, Stryker made a $5 million grant in support of the college's highly ranked study abroad programs.
In 2018, Stryker donated $20 million to Kalamazoo College to establish a 10-year scholarship program for students of color, first-generation students and those from lower-income families. He has donated $66 million to the college in total. For his efforts, Stryker received Kalamazoo College's 2010 Distinguished Service Award, which goes to alumni who have made exceptional personal contributions to the college.
From 2018 to 2021, Stryker served on the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
The Coalition for Progress paid for significant advertising in the 2006 Michigan gubernatorial election in support of Jennifer Granholm, who was re-elected as Governor of Michigan over Republican opponent Dick DeVos.
In August 2012, Stryker donated $325,000 to the nonprofit group Freedom to Marry Minnesota, which helped to organize the defeat of a referendum that would have placed a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in Minnesota. In 2013, Minnesota became the 12th state to legalize same-sex marriage in the United States.
He lives in New York City and maintains a home in New York state's Hudson River Valley.
He previously owned a Mediterranean-style house in Palm Beach, Florida, designed by famed American architect Marion Sims Wyeth. The house, built in 1924, features a west-facing facade that has been designated a historic landmark since 1990. In June 2010, Stryker expanded the property where the house sits by purchasing an adjoining ocean-access lot that included the former residence of Jimmy Buffett and Jane Buffett for $18.5 million.
Stryker also owns multiple properties in his native Kalamazoo, and is credited with built-space revitalization efforts in the city. He unknowingly purchased the commercial building that once housed his grandfather's Orthopedic Frame Co., which eventually became Stryker Corp., before learning of the building's origins in 2003.
Stryker maintains a home in Garrison, New York, along the Hudson River. In June 2013, Stryker purchased the 129-acre property and placed it under a conservation easement to protect against any future development of the riverfront land. The property's parking area and extensive network of trails, including on-foot access to the Hudson River, is managed by the Open Space Institute and is open to the public, with the exception of a 21-acre residential area.
He briefly owned an apartment in the Time Warner Center in New York City's Columbus Circle before selling it in 2007.
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