Thomas S. Kaplan, PhD

Founder and Chairman of the Board

Dr. Thomas S. Kaplan is a passionate environmentalist and supporter of wildlife conservation. Alongside his wife, Daphne Recanati Kaplan, they founded Panthera in 2006 to meet the global challenges of protecting the world's wild cats and their habitats. They subsequently endowed the Recanati-Kaplan Center at Oxford University's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, or WILDCru, creating the leading university-based felid conservation program. The Kaplans also founded Orianne Society, named after their daughter, to preserve eastern Indigo snakes and their habitat, the long-leaf pine forests of the Southeastern United States.

Dr. Kaplan is active in community and family philanthropy. He is the President of the Board of Directors of the 92nd Street Y, a world-renowned, New York-based Jewish community and cultural center, and serves on the Advisory Board of New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital Department of Internal Medicine. The Kaplans have also funded the Lillian Jean Kaplan Renal Transplantation Center at the University of Miami as well as a variety of prizes and grants for medical science research.

Thomas Kaplan holds Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctorate degrees in history from Oxford University. He presently serves as Chairman of the Electrum group of companies as well as Tigris Financial Group Ltd. and its affiliates, a New York City-based advisory and asset management group with a focus on natural resources investing.

Read the Letter from the Chairman

Read the Q&A with the Chairman

Selected Videos Featuring Dr. Thomas Kaplan