Ted Waitt

Founder, The Waitt Family Foundation

Co-founder, Gateway, Inc., founder, Avalon Capital Group, the Waitt Institute For Violence Prevention and the Waitt Institute For Discovery.

Ted Waitt, co-founder and former Chairman and CEO of Gateway, Inc., helped revolutionize how people use technology to live, work, and play through pioneering the direct marketing of personal computers. Labeled a maverick by national business publications, he has since gone on to form multiple enterprises: Avalon Capital Group, Inc., a wholly-owned, billion-dollar private investment company with diverse interests in technology, health care, finance, and real estate; the Waitt Family Foundation; and the Waitt Institutes, nonprofit organizations dedicated to the improvement of mankind's knowledge through historical and scientific exploration.

Through the Waitt Family Foundation, Ted has become one of America's 50 most generous philanthropists, according to Business Week.

Established in 1993, the Foundation initially focused on domestic violence prevention and community development in at risk communities knowing that building stronger families and societies would help foster his vision of a better world.  After investing millions of dollars in various programs in multiple communities, Ted concluded that the Foundations work in domestic violence had the most measurable impact on those at risk today.  The creation of the Waitt Institute for Violence Prevention and the Waitt Institute for Discovery in 2005 has allowed the Foundation to broaden its program interests to the global community.  Today, in addition to funding the two institutes, the Foundation funds a variety of environmental and scientific programs with an emerging focus on ocean exploration, conservation, and rejuvenation.

Waitt has served as the Chairman of the Founding Fathers campaign of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, just one of the efforts that he supports in the fight to prevent domestic violence. He also serves on the Advisory Council of the National Geographic Society and as a Vice Chairman of the Board for the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies.