Silicon Valley CEO leading innovation to beat poverty

When you first meet him, he looks like any other regular American, but with a less than regular smile. Meet Jeff Miller. He would not pass as a software engineer who worked for close to three decades in Silicon Valley, the U.S. hotbed of innovations and entrepreneurship based in California, then created two successful start-ups.

The Californian-born and raised in San Francisco, Bay area, raked in millions of dollars dealing in semi-conductors, computer storage and software but retired from his day job in 2001 although he still serves in as board members in several boards. He instead opted to use his fortunes and wealth of experience for social good through social entrepreneurship.

Miller is driving this through the Global Social Benefit Institute, an initiative aimed at increasing the impact on programmes aimed at improving the lives of the poor. This, he does through the Santa Clara University’s Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship, named after him after he and his wife Karen Miller donated USD25 million to advance social entrepreneurship as a tool to combat global poverty.

“We use innovation and entrepreneurship to help the poor because innovation and entrepreneurship were what gave me such a good career, it felt as the perfect way to give back,” he says musingly.

“We don’t approach problems from any specific geographical area, we go out to the entrepreneurs around the world and make them aware of the programme, they come to us and we look at their programmes and select the ones that have the best chance to utilize our programme to scale the most,” he adds.

One of the key reasons he is visiting Kenya is to attend the graduation of the first batch of social entrepreneurs addressing maternal and child health in Sub-Saharan Africa through the Healthymagination Mother and Child Programme, one of the initiative Miller Center supports using the Silicon Valley principles of innovation and entrepreneurship to address the problems of poverty.

“Of our more than 600 social entrepreneurs, almost 10% are actually here in Kenya, and are either headquartered here or are headquartered elsewhere but operate in Kenya. I don’t know if we have any other country that has that high percentage. Kenya is one of our bigger impact areas,” opines Miller.

Miller earned his BSc in electrical engineering and computer science from Santa Clara University in 1973 and his MBA in 1976. He has worked at Intel, where he met his wife, Karen.

One of the beneficiaries of the Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship training and mentorship initiatives in the country in collaboration with General Electric Health is Dr Daphne Ngunjiri, whose Access Afya initiative has integrated community health through a chain of micro-clinics in Nairobi slums and a Healthy Schools programme that delivers check-ups treatments and training to children in their schools.

Another is Hewa Tele, a social enterprise led by Steve Adudans that saves lives through providing affordable and comprehensive access to quality medical oxygen to rural underserved health facilities in Kenya and the entire region.

Miller was a venture partner with Redpoint Ventures, where he mentored CEOs of enterprise and infrastructure software companies and was also CEO of Documentum, an enterprise document management software company from 1993 to 2001, the year in which Documentum became a publicly listed NASDAQ company with 1,200 employees and revenues of over $200 million.

And Miller’s last advice to entrepreneurs: “Often times we try to do too much but you can’t be an expert at five or six things. So rather than trying to be good at seven things, be good at two, and partner with five people.”