Jimmy Wales

Biography

Jimmy Wales is a true tech entrepreneur with an extraordinary talent for bringing bold ideas to life – most notably as founder of one of the world’s biggest websites Wikipedia. With around five billion hits every month Wikipedia is an essential go-to source of information built on new ideas which turned the global encyclopedia into a worldwide phenomenon.

Jimmy revolutionised the way information is gathered and presented online by allowing the website’s users to edit articles. The bold idea of an open-source, collaborative encyclopedia that accepted contributions from its own readers was groundbreaking and now widely regarded as one of the internet’s greatest success stories.

Little wonder Jimmy has become a sought after keynote speaker on the business of tech innovation and entrepreneurship. After masterminding a website which regularly ranks in the top five most clicked globally just imagine what his knowledge could do for you and your business.

Jimmy has shared his passion for tech and business on high profile BBC programmes including Question Time and BBC Radio Three. He has also advised government departments on crowdsourcing and policy.

And he’s tackled one of the most urgent and pressing problems facing the internet – fake news. He launched WikiTribune with a team of professional journalists and volunteers. It was “news by the people for the people” and the first time professional and citizen journalists had worked side-by-side backed by a community checking and rechecking facts.

Perhaps there is no better example of Jimmy’s fight for a free and fair press than through the Jimmy Wales Foundation for Freedom of Expression, a UK-based charity set up to fight against human rights violations around freedom of expression.

And even Google came calling to ask Jimmy to join a committee advising on internet privacy.

His achievements have received formal recognition in TIME Magazine where he was named one of its most influential people in the ‘Scientists & Thinkers’ category. While Forbes Magazine quite rightly crowned him a ‘Web Celeb’.