John Doerr

During the 2024 election cycle, John Doerr contributed $510,000 to the Harris Victory Fund and $173,000 to the Harris Action Fund, part of a long-standing pattern of large-dollar Democratic political giving (he also gave over $2 million combined to Biden's 2024 re-election joint fundraising committees before Biden withdrew from the race). Bloomberg named him among the top billionaire donors of the 2024 election.

On May 4, 2022, John Doerr and his wife Ann Doerr donated $1.1 billion to Stanford University to establish the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, the university's first new school in 70 years. It is the largest gift in Stanford's history and one of the largest single gifts ever made to a U.S. university. The school combines existing environment and energy institutes with new faculty and a 'Sustainability Accelerator' aimed at climate, energy, and natural-resource solutions. Doerr has invested in zero-emissions technology since 2006 and authored a book on climate action.

Ellen Pao, a former junior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, filed a $16 million gender discrimination and retaliation lawsuit in May 2012 naming the firm and several senior partners individually, including John Doerr. The suit alleged Doerr and other senior partners ignored her complaints about sexual harassment by a colleague and that Doerr told her a board seat she deserved was given to a male partner because he 'needed a win.' At the March 2015 trial, Doerr testified he was a strong advocate for Pao, but opposing counsel showed he had publicly denied the allegations on Kleiner's blog before reading the independent investigator's report, and evidence suggested he had shifted from backing Pao to endorsing her termination. The firm and named partners won the case, but multiple outlets described Doerr's personal reputation as damaged by the trial.