Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is the founder, board member and Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit corporation that operates the Wikipedia project, and several other wiki projects, including Wiktionary and Wikinews. He is also the co-founder, along with Angela Beesley, of the for-profit company Wikia, Inc.

Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama. His father was a grocery store manager, while his mother, Doris, and grandmother, Erma, ran a small private school, "in the tradition of the one-room schoolhouse," where Wales was educated. There were four children in his grade most of the time, so the school grouped together first through fourth grades, and fifth through eighth grades.

A 2005 Time magazine article incorrectly reported that Wales was homeschooled. Strictly speaking he was not, but he did note that his schooling experience was "in a sense similar", since his mother and grandmother were his primary teachers. The school's philosophy of education was significantly influenced by the Montessori method, and students had a fair amount of freedom to study whatever they liked. Wales has said that he spent many hours poring over the World Book Encyclopedia during this time.

Currently, Wales works and lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.

After eighth grade, Wales attended Randolph School, a university-preparatory school, which was an early supporter of computer labs and other technology for student use. Wales has said that the school was expensive for his family, but that education was regarded as important. "Education was always a passion in my household бн you know, the very traditional approach to knowledge and learning and establishing that as a base for a good life." He received his Bachelor's degree in finance from Auburn University and started with the Ph.D. finance programs at the University of Alabama, where he left with a Master's in finance. After that, he took courses offered in the Ph.D. finance program at Indiana University. He taught at both universities during his postgraduate studies, but did not write the doctoral dissertation required to earn a Ph.D.

From 1994-2000, Wales served as research director at Chicago Options Associates, a futures and options trader in Chicago. By "betting on interest rate and foreign-currency fluctuations" he had soon earned enough to "support himself and his wife for the rest of their lives", according to Daniel Pink of Wired Magazine.

In 1996, he founded a search portal called Bomis, which also sold erotic materials until mid-2005. He was asked in a September 2005 C-SPAN interview about his previous involvement with what the interviewer, Brian Lamb, called "dirty pictures." In response, Wales described Bomis as a "guy-oriented search engine", with a market similar to Maxim magazine. In an interview with Wired News, he also explained that he disputed the categorization of Bomis content as "soft-core pornography": "If R-rated movies are porn, it was porn. In other words, no, it was not." Wales is no longer actively involved in the company.[citation needed]

In March 2000, he started a peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopedia, Nupedia.com ("the free encyclopedia"), and hired Larry Sanger to be its editor-in-chief.

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