Jay Walker

He has founded a number of successful startups that currently have more than 60 million customers. Mr. Walker is chairman of Walker Digital, LLC, a Stamford, Connecticut-based laboratory that invents entirely new ways for businesses to operate and serve consumers.

In addition to being the lead inventor, Mr. Walker is responsible for developing Walker Digital's strategic relationships and long-term vision. Walker Digital maintains active relationships with some of the world's largest and most innovative companies.

Mr. Walker is one of a dozen or so living inventors worldwide to hold 200 patents in multiple fields. To date, he and his teams have invented over 600 proprietary business systems that solve problems in industries ranging from travel to defense to retail to restaurants to vending to publishing to gaming and entertainment.

Mr. Walker and a team at Walker Digital created the central innovations behind Priceline.com, the groundbreaking "name-your-own-price" company for airline tickets, rental cars and hotel rooms. Now a profitable public company, Priceline.com was one of only a handful of startups in US history to reach a billion dollars in annual sales in under 24 months. The seven-year old company has served tens of millions of customers and currently accounts for more than 1% of U.S. airline ticket sales.

Mr. Walker co-founded Synapse, which revolutionized the magazine subscription industry and was sold to Time Warner for $600 million. He served as the marketing leader for the company for five years during which he produced more than two billion pieces of direct mail and created a customer base of 25 million active buyers. For his work, he won the Direct Marketer of the Year award in 1999.

Mr. Walker also co-founded Target Communications, a conference and publishing company which was sold to Primedia in 2000. He has also designed and implemented marketing programs to support Fortune 500 companies such as Federal Express, where he pioneered the concept of using Federal Express delivery for the catalog industry.

Mr. Walker's inventions and innovations have been widely recognized. He has twice been named by the editors of TIME magazine as one of the 50 most influential business leaders in the digital age. Business Week selected him as one of its 25 Internet pioneers most responsible for "changing the competitive landscape of almost every industry in the world." Newsweek cited him as one of three executives at the forefront of the Internet commerce revolution.

He serves on the Board of World Information Transfer (a United Nations NGO) and is a frequent speaker on college campuses as well as making numerous appearances on television and radio shows. Jay and his wife Eileen have two children and live in Connecticut. He holds a B.S. degree in Industrial Relations from Cornell University.