Jim O'Neill (Thiel Foundation)

Jim O'Neill (Thiel Foundation)
Nationality	US
Alma mater	•  Yale University •  University of Chicago
Minion of Peter Thiel selected as Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services in 2025  Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services  In office 2025 - Present Employer Donald Trump/Second presidency

Not to be confused with Jim O'Neill (Goldman Sachs).

James O'Neill is an American science and technology investor.

Activities

He worked in several roles at the Department of Health and Human Services during the Presidency of George W. Bush, co-founded Peter Thiel's Thiel Fellowship in 2010, and was chief executive officer of SENS Research Foundation - a medical research organization focused on rejuvenation- from 2019 to July 2021. Peter Thiel tries to reverse aging by injecting the blood of the young.

O'Neill acted as CEO of the Thiel Foundation from 2009 to 2012, and was a managing director at Thiel's Mithril Capital Management from 2012 to 2019. He has been a frequent critic of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and was considered by Donald Trump to lead the agency during his first presidential administration.

In 2025, President-elect Donald Trump nominated O'Neill to serve as United States deputy secretary of health and human services. He has stated that he is "very much in favor of vaccines" and "an advisor to a vaccine company" and that he supports the CDC vaccine schedule.

 

Related Quotation

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Donald Trump/Second presidency	“My opinion generally is that some figures in the Trump administration were kind of chosen as a PR move and that they're not actually in charge of what they're nominally in charge of. "So, like Pete Hegseth, head of the Pentagon, he's kind of a Fox and Friends, you know, he's a TV show host. And the The Deputy Director of the Pentagon, Steve Feinberg of Cerberus Capital, is most likely the person actually running the Pentagon, not Hegseth, in my opinion. "And I think that's true also for, RFK Junior in charge of HHS. I don't really think he's running. He's just kind of this figure that connected with Trump's base, particularly during the Covid era, and made them think reforms would come. And those reforms haven't really come, but he's kind of there to give the impression that things have changed. But the person behind him, the deputy secretary, is Jim O'Neill, who's a career affiliate of Peter Thiel who's also the power behind J.D. Vance and, you know, the man that made Palantir what it is. "And so, you know, I think it's just a way of sort of masking the people that are actually running stuff. And I think that's probably true, too, of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino. They were making the rounds on podcasts and were making these connections and building trust and relationships with the public in Trump's base. But it seems like they're not actually, running anything, in my opinion. They're kind of figureheads in a way, and they're willing figureheads. I would say."”	Whitney Webb	28 July 2025

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Hereticon/2022 Conference	January 2022			Peter Thiel-funded conference scooping up "alternative voices"
Hereticon/2024 Conference	28 October 2024	31 October 2024	US Florida Miami Beach	Peter Thiel-funded conference scooping up "alternative voices"

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.