James Stillman Rockefeller (June 8, 1902 – August 10, 2004) was a member of the prominent U.S. Rockefeller family. He won an Olympic rowing title for the United States, then became president of what eventually became Citigroup. He was a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History and a member of the board of overseers of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
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Early life and rowing
He was born on June 8, 1902, to William Goodsell Rockefeller (1870–1922) and Elsie Stillman, daughter of James Stillman, in the Manhattan borough of New York City. He graduated from The Taft School, Watertown, Connecticut, in 1920, and graduated from Yale University in 1924, where he was elected to Scroll and Key and Phi Beta Kappa. He was also a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon. That same year Rockefeller captained a crew of Yale teammates that included Benjamin Spock. They won a gold medal in rowing at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, France. Rockefeller appeared on the cover of Time magazine on July 7, 1924.
Career
Rockefeller returned from the Olympics and spent the next six years with the Wall Street banking firm of Brown Bros. & Co. In 1930, he joined the National City Bank in New York, of which his maternal grandfather, James Stillman, had once been president and chairman of the board. Rockefeller himself became president of the bank in 1952, and chairman of the board in 1959. He retired as chairman in 1967. During his tenure, the bank merged with the smaller First National Bank and took the name The First National City Bank of New York.