Thorne was born in Georgetown, Guyana on November 24, 1964, but spent his early years in Nassau, Bahamas attending Saint Thomas Moore"s Primary School, until he was 10 and then returned to Guyana where he attended Saint Margaret"s Primary School and then Queen"s College.
Yale University; Yale Law School.
He became a Senior Vice President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 2008, were he helped establish the first LGBT Task Force. Thorne helped argue Abbott v. Burke on behalf of Head Start and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
His mother, who is of mixed Indian and Chinese descent, met his father, who is also multi-ethnic (Black, Scottish, Indian and Chinese).
While in Georgetown, Guyana.
He immigrated to the United States in 1984. He is the great grandson of Alfred A. Thorne, a human rights advocate and educator in British Guiana.
Thorne holds a bachelor"s degree with cum laude honors in economics and political science from Yale College and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School. In 2012 he taught "Philanthropy in Action" at Yale, where a gift by an anonymous donor allowed students to donate $100,000 to charitable causes.
Thorne was appointed Executive Vice President of the Paley Center for Media in 2013.
Thorne was active in the 2008 Obama presidential campaign, serving on the Finance and Policy Committees, LGBT Leadership Council and African American Leadership Council. He resigned from the LGBT Council after a personal email exchange criticizing the Clinton campaign became public. Previously he was Chief Operating Officer at Human Rights Campaign, and Vice President at Human Rights Campaign Foundation.
Formerly, Thorne was Executive Director of New Jersey Head Start, an association of all the Head Start Programs in New Jersey.
While at the NJHSA, he oversaw the implementation of Abbott v. Burke, the New Jersey Supreme Court decision that mandated parity in funding and Whole School Reform.
Thorne had represented Head Start, the New Jersey National Association for the Advancement of Colored People State Conference, and daycare centers in later litigation (Abbott VIII).
