Jay Walder joined The Community Builders (TCB) board in 2023. He has enjoyed a distinguished international career, which includes 40 years working in transport, property and infrastructure in the United States, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Jay is a senior advisor to McKinsey & Company, is a non-executive director on the Boards of Alstom, Boldyn Networks and TCB, and is on the Board of Advisors of the Taubman Center at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Jay joined Virgin Hyperloop as chief executive officer in November 2018. Under his leadership, the company had the first people to ever ride in a hyperloop pod. The company also raised more than $400 million, qualified for US Federal Transportation funding, designated West Virginia as the site of the Hyperloop Certification Center and secured 24 technology patents.
Previously, he was the president and CEO of Motivate International, the largest bike sharing company in the United States. Jay joined Motivate as new investors took over the struggling company at the end of 2014 and led a dramatic turnaround before its sale to Lyft in 2018.
Immediately prior, Jay was the chief executive officer of the MTR Corporation in Hong Kong. He led the company to build a portfolio of rail and property related operations in Hong Kong, the Mainland of China, Europe and Australia. MTR Corporation shares are listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Before joining MTR, Jay was the chairman and chief executive officer of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, where he led the company through the 2009 economic crisis. From 2007 to 2009, he was a partner at McKinsey & Company London where he was the global leader of the firm’s Infrastructure Practice. Prior to that, he was managing director, Finance and Planning at Transport for London, lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore.
Previously, he was on the Executive Board of the International Association of Public Transport
(UITP), the Executive Committee of the American Public Transit Association (APTA), a member of the Visiting Committee for the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a Fellow of the Hong Kong Management Association, a Governor of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, an Advisor to Lyft and on the Board of Directors of UK based Citymapper.
Jay holds a Master in Public Policy from Harvard University and bachelor’s degree in Economics and Political Science with Honors from Binghamton University. He completed the Executive Programme in Strategic Leadership from Templeton College at Oxford University.
Jay has dual citizenship in the U.S. and the United Kingdom and currently resides in Massachusetts.
