Tony Tjan

Founder & CEO, Cue Ball; Advisory Council Member
  • Director's Office

Anthony Tjan ​is CEO and co-founder of the Boston-based venture investment firm, Cue Ball Group, and a senior advisor and mentor to business and social entrepreneurs. At Cue Ball, he has founded a firm based around the principles of being people-first, purpose-driven, and patient towards an objective of creating lasting change and durable value. The core strategy for Cue Ball has been to partner with extraordinary people who seek to disrupt market inefficiencies and reframe business models through human-centered design, data analytics, and innovative technologies. 

Tjan is a proponent of conscious capitalism and also a prolific business writer and a ​New York Times​ -bestselling author who has continuously sought to bring humanity and character into the business world. Tjan was raised in St. John’s, Newfoundland to parents who immigrated to Canada from Indonesia and Taiwan. He later came to the U.S. to attend Harvard College, Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School, and received an extraordinary alien visa to pursue his entrepreneurial endeavors. In 2013, he was the first in his family to become a naturalized American citizen. 

Tjan began his career with McKinsey & Company, before founding the pioneering Internet services firm, ZEFER, whose mission was to implement large scale web applications for Fortune companies. ZEFER’s unique approach combined left and right-side thinking across the disciplines of business, design and technology. For nearly 15 years, Tjan was also a Senior Partner and Vice Chairman of the strategic advisory group Parthenon (now Parthenon E-Y). A career hallmark came at the time surrounding the events of September 11, 2001, when he was appointed as the senior strategic advisor to the then-CEO of the Thomson Corporation, Richard Harrington. At Thomson, Tjan worked side-by-side with Harrington and helped catalyze one of the world's largest information media transformations, developing and executing a business and cultural strategy that led to a four-fold increase in cash flow and market capitalization (over $30 billion) and the creation of Thomson Reuters. 


Today, Tjan is active across Cue Ball’s holdings as the co-founder and executive chairman of MiniLuxe, a retail services brand whose mission is to transform the largely immigrant-based nail care industry. Since its founding in 2008, MiniLuxe has followed its vision of reimagining and elevating nail salons through better health and hygiene practices and, not least, through training, development and professional fulfillment for its 700+ mostly female employees. Over the years, Tjan has led, advised and invested in more than 50 people-centric and culture-building technology companies ranging from professional development platforms for women, recruitment platforms for minorities, and one of the largest online wellness companies that is enhancing employee engagement across the Global 1000 through better health and fitness at the workplace. 

Tjan has been an active participant in the leadership, mentorship and support of a variety of non-profits and social impact organizations including From the Top, Project Citizenship, and the Political Asylum / Immigration Representation (PAIR) Project. He also served as the Executive Chairman of Sandbox, an organization founded to recognize and build a global community of rising leaders under 30. Tjan has been recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Global Leader for Tomorrow, is a 2018 recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, a longstanding member and speaker of the TED community, a member of the Advisory Committee of the MIT Media Lab, and a recipient of an Outstanding Achievement Award from the PAIR Project for his contributions to that organization. With over 100 online and print articles, he has been a longtime contributor to the ​Harvard Business Review​ . Tjan is also the best-selling author of ​Good People ​ (Portfolio, 2017) and co-author of ​Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck ​ (Harvard Business School Press), named one of ​Fast Company’s ​ “Best Business Books of the Year, 2012.” 

Tjan’s board experience cuts across private, public, and non-profit arenas. Current or most recent board roles or strategic advisor roles include MiniLuxe (experiential retail), Landit (platform for the career development of women); ShapeUp/Virgin Pulse (health and wellness); Dubset (music rights management); TB12 (natural health and wellness); Wait What (gender neutral digital content); Cure Alzheimer’s Fund (venture philanthropy); and the McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital (health and well being). 

In addition to the AB and MBA degrees that he holds from Harvard University, he has also served as a two-time Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government (Belfer and CBG Fellow) and as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard Business School.