Distinguished Speaker Series: Jay H. Walder, President and CEO of Motivate

From Mass to Personal: Evolving Ideas of Public Transit. Mr. Walder has led a distinguished international career in the public transportation sector, which includes 30 years working in the rail industry in the United States and the United Kingdom. Today he is the President & CEO of Motivate, a global leader in bike share. He will discuss the ways that technology is shaping our cities and changing expectations for how we get around. 

Speaker Bio:

Motivate is the leading global company developing and implementing large-scale bike share systems. The company operates bike share systems in 10 cities worldwide, including New York, Boston, Chicago, Washington D.C., Seattle, San Francisco, Toronto and Melbourne, Australia. Motivate’s bike share programs have proven incredibly popular. New starts and major expansions are underway that will increase the total number of bikes to nearly 25,000. Mr. Walder was recruited to Motivate in October 2014 as the company was acquired by new investors.
 
Mr. Walder has enjoyed a distinguished international career in the public transportation sector, which includes 30 years working in the rail industry in the United States and the United Kingdom. Before joining Alta Bicycle Share, Mr. Walder was the Chief Executive Officer of MTR Corporation in Hong Kong, one of the world’s largest rail and property companies. Prior to that, Mr. Walder was the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority. From 2007 to 2009, he was a partner at McKinsey & Company London where he was the global leader of the firm’s Infrastructure Practice. Between 2001 and 2007, he was Managing Director, Finance and Planning at Transport for London and prior to that he was a Lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Mr. Walder holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics with Honors from Binghamton University, Harpur College, and a Master in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He also completed the Executive Programme in Strategic Leadership from Templeton College at the University of Oxford.

Mr. Walder is on the Board of Advisors of the Taubman Center at the Harvard Kennedy School and is a member of the Visiting Committee for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Mr. Walder was on the Executive Committee of the American Public Transit Association (APTA), the Executive Board of the International Association of Public Transport (UITP).