Courtesy of Jay Walker

Curiosity Expert: Jay Walker

Curator of TEDMED; Chairman, Walker Digital; Curator, Walker Library of the History of Human Imagination

• Jay Walker on Vimeo
• Follow TEDMED on Facebook and Twitter!

Jay Walker, one of America's best-known business inventors and entrepreneurs, has founded multiple successful startup companies that today serve more than 75 million customers in 15 different industries.

Mr. Walker is curator and chairman of TEDMED, a global community of people who passionately believe that the future of health and medicine is here. As the sole licensee of world-famous TED organization, TEDMED organizes the nation's only conference that brings together thousands of medical and non-medical leaders from every sector of society. With no agenda and no policy prescriptions, TEDMED seeks to serve the nation and the world by creating a safe place where people with very different ideas can come together to combine the best thinking from every field and create infinite new possibilities.

Mr. Walker is chairman of Walker Digital, a privately-held R&D lab founded in 1994 and based in Stamford, Connecticut. He is widely known as the founder of Priceline.com, which brought a new level of value to the travel industry. Today, Priceline is a highly profitable, billion-dollar public company with tens of millions of active customers. The business processes that guide Priceline's success were created in the Walker Digital invention lab.

Mr. Walker is a key member of several organizations that promote innovative solutions to the world's problems, including The Atlantic Council; the non-profit Preventative Medicine Research Institute (Dean Ornish, founder); World Information Transfer (NGO in General Consultative Status with the UN); the non-profit TED; and the Young Presidents Organization. Mr. Walker funded two public policy documentary films about the space race and the role of science in American life.

A striking embodiment of Mr. Walker's focus on innovation is his vast personal library. Within a multi-level, mazelike setting, the Walker Library of the History of Human Imagination contains thousands of landmark books and museum-level artifacts. The Walker Library has hosted numerous world leaders from business, government, science, medicine, the arts and education as part of Mr. Walker's commitment to foster thoughtful discussions on the challenges facing the U.S. and the world community.

Jay and his wife Eileen have two children and live in Connecticut. Eileen Walker is a trustee for Cornell University, Vice Chairman of the Harvey School and a former personnel executive at IBM.