Sean Parker
Founder and Chairman, The Parker Foundation
Sean Parker is a philanthropist and entrepreneur with a record of launching genre-defining companies. He is the chairman of The Parker Foundation, which focuses on three areas: Life Sciences, Global Public Health, and Civic Engagement. In 2015, Mr. Parker announced a $600 million contribution to launch the foundation.
Mr. Parker has been recognized for his leadership in funding and promoting research into the relationship between the immune system and cancer. Mr Parker helped to establish the Stand Up 2 Cancer (SU2C) and Cancer Research Institute’s (CRI) Immunotherapy Dream Team. In 2013, he was honored by CRI with the Oliver R. Grace Award for Distinguished Service in Advancing Cancer Research.
Mr. Parker was the co-founder of Napster at age 19 and Plaxo at 21. In 2004, he joined with Mark Zuckerberg to develop the online social network Facebook and served as Facebook’s founding president. In 2007, Mr. Parker co-founded Causes on Facebook, which registered 180 million people to donate money and take action via Facebook; and, in 2014, he announced his backing of a new initiative called Brigade, an online platform for civic engagement. Mr. Parker is also a board member at Spotify.