Peter Crisp had divided his adult life into three phases: learn, earn, and return.
After graduating from Yale University, he three years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force before going back to school and earning his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1960. Following HBS, he embarked on a 50-year career managing the investments of the Rockefeller family. Crisp had been a fan of Laurance Rockefeller, and one day decided to reach out to him. “Laurance is the godfather of modern-day venture capital, and I was fascinated by his interests,” he says. “So, I wrote him a letter—and he hired me six months later.” Crisp was a founder of Venrock Associates, the family’s highly successful venture capital firm that concentrates in making investments in early stage technology-based companies.
On the “return” front, Crisp has served on the board of directors for 40 different companies, as well as many nonprofit entities focusing primarily on education, community activities—and, perhaps most important to Crisp, health care. His interest in the health realm began when he was in his mid-thirties and was asked to join the board of the Community Hospital in Glen Cove, New York. Shortly thereafter, explains Crisp: “The chairman who had recruited me became terminally ill, and I was asked to take his place.” That hospital is now part of Northwell Health, one of the nation’s largest health care systems in the country. While at Glen Cove, Crisp oversaw the fund-raising and construction of a new emergency department, which was state-of-the-art at that time. He has also served for 42 years as a trustee of New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Following retirement, Crisp and his wife, Missy, moved to Hobe Sound. Promptly invited to join the board of the Jupiter Medical Center Foundation, he became chairman a year later and served in that position from 2008 to 2013. Today, he continues to serve as an emeritus trustee and has played meaningful roles in raising funds for Jupiter Medical Center. Over the years, the Crisps have donated more than $6 million dollars to Jupiter Medical Center—and their gift to the Anderson Family Cancer Institute was a major catalyst in attracting a $25 million donation, the largest single gift Jupiter Medical Center has ever received. “I care about Jupiter Medical Center and its transition from a community hospital to a regional medical center,” says Crisp. “[Missy and I] feel it is important for a not-for-profit hospital like JMC to be a top provider, and we are dedicated to helping that happen.”
In their downtime, Peter and Missy—who has a background in education and has served on the executive committee of the United States Golf Association for seven years and still officiates tournaments like the U.S. Open and the Honda Classic— spend time with their three daughters and nine grandchildren. They spend summers in Essex, Connecticut and on Fishers Island in New York.