Speaker Biographies - May 2012 National Meeting
Jay 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. The business processes that guide Priceline’s success were created in the Walker Digital invention lab.
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 (ranging from dinosaur bones to an authentic 1957 Russian Sputnik satellite). 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.
Steven Johnson is the best-selling author of seven books on the intersection of science, technology and personal experience. His writings have influenced everything from the way political campaigns use the Internet, to cuttingedge ideas in urban planning, to the battle against 21st
-century terrorism. 
Steven’s newest book is titled Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. His previous book The Invention of Air tells the story of Joseph Priestly, the Founding Fathers, and how innovative ideas emerge and spread in society and drive historical change. Like his award-winning book, The Ghost Map, The Invention of Air uses a surprising historical and biographical narrative to discuss ideas that have profoundly shaped our modern world.
Steven has also co-created three influential web sites: the pioneering online magazine FEED, the Webby-Awardwinning community site, Plastic.com, and the hyperlocal media site outside.in, recently acquired by AOL.
Both social critic and technologist, Steven has a genius for mapping the future—for predicting and explaining the real-world impact of cutting-edge developments in science, technology and media.
Steven is a contributing editor to Wired magazine. He lectures widely on technological, scientific, and cultural issues. He recently won the Newhouse School fourth annual Mirror Awards for his TIME magazine cover article titled “How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live”. Steven has also written for
The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and many other periodicals. He’s appeared on many high-profile television programs, including The Charlie Rose Show, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer