James Stillman Rockefeller 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.

James Jewett Stillman was an American businessman who invested in land, banking, and railroads in New York, Texas, and Mexico. He was chairman of the board of directors of the National City Bank. He forged alliances with the Rockefeller family, Standard Oil and Kuhn, Loeb & Co. to lay a foundation that made it, arguably, "the greatest bank in the Western Hemisphere." He engaged in an expansion policy that made National City the largest bank in the United States by 1894, the first to open foreign branches, and a leader in foreign exchange. By 1902, the bank was able to pay any sum of money to any city in the world within 24 hours. He was worth approximately $77 million at the time of his death, making him one of the wealthiest people in the country at the time.