"Founder of Wikipedia"

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, was ranked 12th by Forbes Magazine in their first annual “Web Celeb 25” List and named one of TIME Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People.” Wales created the first open-source online encyclopedia truly by the people and for the people. Wikipedia's articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and nearly all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet. Having steadily risen in popularity since its inception, Wikipedia currently ranks among the top ten most-visited web sites worldwide. He is co-founder of Wikia, a privately owned free web hosting service he set up in 2004.

In May 2008, Jimmy Wales co-chaired the annual World Economic Forum on the Middle East, the foremost global gathering of political, business and cultural leaders. In 2007, The World Economic Forum recognized Wales as one of its “Young Global Leaders.”

Jimmy Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama. His father was a grocery store manager while Wales was growing up (his father has since retired). Wales's mother Doris and grandmother Irma ran a small private school, "in the tradition of the one-room schoolhouse," where he also went to school. There were four children in his grade most of the time, so the school grouped together first through fourth grade and fifth through eighth grade. A Time magazine interview incorrectly reported that Wales was home schooled. Strictly speaking Wales was not, but he did note that his schooling experience was "in a sense similar" since his mother and grandmother were his primary teachers. Students had a fair amount of freedom to study whatever they liked; the school's philosophy of education was significantly influenced by Montessori. Wales spent many hours poring over the World Book Encyclopedia during this time. After eighth grade, Wales went to Randolph School, a college prep school, which was and is an early adopter of student computer labs and other technology for direct student use. This prep school was expensive for the family, since they had few means, but Wales reports that his family believed education was very important: "[education] was always a passion in my household ... you know, the very traditional approach to knowledge and learning and establishing that as a base for a good life."

He received his undergraduate degree from Auburn University and his masters from the University of Alabama. Later, he took courses offered in the Ph.D. finance programs at the University of Alabama and Indiana University. He taught at both universities during his postgraduate studies, but he did not write the doctoral dissertation required to earn a postgraduate degree at these institutions. Wales went on to become a futures and options trader in Chicago, and within a few years had earned enough to "support himself and his wife for the rest of their lives." (March 2005, Wired article)

In 1996, Wales founded a search portal called Bomis which sells original content, and included a "Bomis Babes" blog based on Slashcode. Wales is no longer president or CEO of Bomis, and now devotes most of his time to his wiki projects.

In March 2000, he founded a peer-reviewed open-content encyclopedia Nupedia.com ("the free encyclopedia"), and hired Larry Sanger to be its editor-in-chief. On January 15, 2001, Wales and Larry Sanger set up Wikipedia, a similar wiki-based site intended for collaboration on early encyclopedic content before submitting it to Nupedia for peer review. Wikipedia's rapid growth soon made it the dominant project and Nupedia was mothballed. Sanger did most of the early development of Nupedia, while Wales mainly provided the necessary capital. Wales considers himself the sole founder of Wikipedia, though Sanger initially came up with the idea to make the encylopedia wiki-based and coined the name 'wikipedia'".