Executive DirectorMiller Center for Social Entrepreneurship
Thane Kreiner, PhD, is Executive Director of Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship and Howard & Alida Charney University Professor at Santa Clara University, the Jesuit university in Silicon Valley. Miller Center accelerates entrepreneurship to end global poverty and protect the planet. Through its Global Social Benefit Institute (GSBI®) programs, Miller Center has worked with over 800 social enterprises in 65 countries, which have collectively impacted the lives of over 259 million people worldwide and raised more than $580 million in capital to scale their impact. Thane co-leads Miller Center’s Global Social Benefit Fellowship, which engages high-potential undergraduates in interdisciplinary action research projects that help social enterprises scale their impact.
Before joining Miller Center in 2010, Thane was Founder, President, and CEO of Second Genome (previously Phylotech), a microbiome analysis company; Founder, President, and CEO of Presage Biosciences, Inc., focused on bringing better cancer drugs to market; and start-up President and CEO of iPierian (formerly iZumi Bio, Inc.), a regenerative medicine venture acquired in 2014 by Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Prior to his endeavors as a “parallel entrepreneur”, Thane spent 14 years in senior leadership roles at Affymetrix, Inc., the DNA chip industry pioneer acquired by Thermo Fisher in 2016.
Thane earned his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1994; his Ph.D. in Neurosciences from Stanford University School of Medicine in 1988; and his B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Texas, Austin in 1983.