LA JOLLA, CA – The La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) is pleased to announce that one of San Diego’s leading financial executives, Paul Thiel, president of Northern Trust Wealth Management, San Diego region, has been elected to its Board of Directors.
“We’re delighted to welcome Paul to our board,” said Mitchell Kronenberg, Ph.D., La Jolla Institute president and chief scientific officer. “Paul’s election follows his deep involvement with the Institute over the past six years as a donor and co-chair of LJI’s Planned Giving Advisory Council. Paul’s financial expertise and stature in San Diego’s financial community, along with his passion for the LJI’s mission, will make him invaluable to La Jolla Institute in attracting new resources and philanthropy that are critical to advancing our groundbreaking research.”
A resident of La Jolla with his wife, Lori, who is an Institute Ambassador, Thiel holds a BA from the University of Connecticut and an MBA from the University of Virginia. He has completed executive programs at both Stanford Business School and Northwestern University. Before entering the financial services industry, Thiel was an award-winning journalist for The Washington Post, Business Week and several other publications. Before joining Northern Trust Wealth Management, he was regional managing director of BNY Mellon, San Diego Region, and co-chair of BNY Mellon’s National Family Law Advisory.
Thiel has a long history of local business and community involvement. He was founder and creator of San Diego Advisor of the Year, an awards program for financial professionals. He is chairman and CEO of Chairman’s Roundtable, a two-decades old organization of former CEOs who provide pro bono consulting to San Diego businesses. He is currently an advisory board member of Dallman Confections; a member of the Dean’s Advisory Board at California State University San Marcos; and a guest lecturer at San Diego State University. He is a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst.
Previously, Thiel served on the boards of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation and the Rancho Santa Fe Foundation, and as a director for the Association for Corporate Growth and the Corporate Directors Forum. He served as major and planned gifts chair for Challenged Athletes Foundation and was a member of the board of advisors-Nonprofit Center at the University of San Diego.
Thiel said he is honored to be elected to the board and is looking forward to building on his deep involvement with La Jolla Institute.
“When you see as many family members and friends suffer from serious autoimmune diseases as I have, you jump at any opportunity to support a world-class immunology research institute like La Jolla Institute,” Thiel said. “I hope to leverage my business and finance expertise to help attract new resources and philanthropy to fund even more groundbreaking science and help LJI achieve its ambitious mission of ‘Life Without Disease.’”
Thiel said he is proud of what he and his colleagues have accomplished through LJI’s Planned Giving Advisory Council, a highly respected group of 29 professional advisors who volunteer their combined expertise in financial, estate and charitable gift planning to generate philanthropic support for La Jolla Institute. He said the council has been able to introduce La Jolla Institute to the broader community and increase awareness of the Institute’s impressive scientific accomplishments, including several of which are saving and improving the lives of those battling immune system-related diseases.
“Thanks to the brilliance of its world-renowned principal investigators, La Jolla Institute’s research is among the most exciting and important in the world today,” Thiel said. “The Institute understands that leveraging the power of the immune system is the key to human health, and as a result, their researchers are out ahead of most everyone else in understanding the causes and potential cures for a wide array of life- threatening diseases.”
Thiel said he hopes he can make an even greater contribution to the Institute by serving on the board.
“I’m not a scientist, but I do know the financial world and I believe I can have an impact on battling disease by attracting critically needed support for the Institute so their remarkable scientists can focus on generating the kind of immunological discoveries that will soon transform the lives of millions of people around the world.”
