Want to Talk a Tech Millionaire Into Funding Your Nonprofit?

Inside the Field Museum's recently unveiled Cyrus Tang Hall of China, a rare kingfisher headdress glitters in a new technological light. Touch screens allow visitors to view it and 350 or so other artifacts from every angle and to read the unique stories behind them. This sort of approach might not have happened if it weren't for Mark Tebbe, a veteran tech entrepreneur whose companies sold for millions and who has been on the Field's board since 2012.

He founded Lante, which was worth billions at the height of the dot-com boom and taken private in 2002, and in 2011 he sold Answers.com, which he co-founded, for $127 million. After the second sale, he remarried and, with his children off to college, moved downtown.