Jeffrey Skoll

Jeffrey Stuart Skoll, OC (born January 16, 1965) is a Canadian engineer, billionaire internet entrepreneur and film producer.

He was the first president of eBay, eventually using the wealth this gave him to become a philanthropist, particularly through the Skoll Foundation, and his media company Participant Media.

He founded an investment firm, Capricorn Investment Group, soon after and currently serves as its chairman.

Born in Montreal, Quebec, he graduated from University of Toronto in 1987 and left Canada to attend Stanford University's business school in 1993.

Shortly after graduating from business school, he began his career at eBay where he wrote the business plan that the company followed from its emergence as a start-up to a larger company.

While at the company, he began the eBay Foundation which was allocated pre-IPO stock now worth $32 million.

Once eBay's second largest stockholder, behind Omidyar, he subsequently cashed out a portion of his company holdings, yielding him around $2 billion.

He graduated with a BASc with honours in 1987 from the University of Toronto's electrical engineering program.

While an undergraduate student, he co-edited the engineering students' satirical newspaper The Toike Oike. He paid his way through college by pumping gas in North York, Ontario.

After graduating he backpacked around the world for several months before returning and founding two businesses in Toronto: Skoll Engineering, an information technology consulting firm and Micros on the Move Ltd., a computer rental firm.

He left Canada in 1993 to earn a Master of Business Administration degree at Stanford Business School, graduating in 1995.

After Stanford he went to work at Knight-Ridder where he was working on internet projects for the publishing company.

In 1996 Skoll met eBay's founder Pierre Omidyar, who hired him as the company's first president and first full-time employee.

While eBay was already profitable at the time Skoll joined, he wrote the business plan that eBay followed in subsequent years.

He remained President until the arrival of Meg Whitman in January 1998 when he became Vice President, Strategic Planning and Analysis until back problems necessitated his departure from full-time employment at the company.

In 1998, he championed the creation of the eBay Foundation, which was allocated pre-IPO stock now worth $32 million.

Once eBay's second largest stockholder, behind Omidyar, he subsequently cashed out a portion of his company holdings, yielding him around $2 billion.

He has given the eponymous Skoll Foundation approximately $1 billion of eBay stock since its formation in 1999.

In 2004, Skoll founded the company Participant to create films that increase public awareness of critical social issues and give audiences opportunities to get involved through education and social action campaigns.

His first films Syriana (2005), Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), and North Country (2005), along with the documentary Murderball (2005), accounted for 11 Oscar nominations in 2006.

In 2005, Skoll's first Participant productions were released, with Syriana; Good Night, and Good Luck; North Country; and Murderball, together garnering 11 Oscar nominations.

A year later, Skoll financed and played a key role in the creation of the environmental documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which grew out of a slideshow developed by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore on the climate crisis.

His subsequent films have included An Inconvenient Truth (2006), Fast Food Nation (2006), The World According to Sesame Street (2006), Waiting for "Superman" (2010), Lincoln (2012), and his latest, Spotlight (2015) won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2016.

Jeff Skoll was born to a Jewish family in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

His mother was a teacher and his father was a chemical company owner who sold industrial chemicals.

The family settled in Toronto in the late seventies.

When Skoll was fourteen, his father was diagnosed with cancer which prompted him to discuss with his son how much he regretted not having had the time to do everything he had planned in life.

His first job was pumping gas at a York Mills gas station.

The film won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary.

"I would never have predicted that a film like An Inconvenient Truth would impact so many people", Skoll told Philanthropy Roundtable.

The Financial Times reported in 2009 that Participant allows Skoll to "pursue social and political causes through a mass medium. From modest beginnings, the company (which Skoll chairs, supported by a team of executives) is now a serious player."

Fortune wrote the next year that Skoll's films are not typical Hollywood fare, "they tackle weighty subjects such as eco-Armageddon, petro-terrorism, education reform, and women's rights. In short they tend to reflect Skoll's progressive, and ultimately optimistic, worldview that shining a light on the world's problems will inspire people to band together to bring about change on a large scale. (Indeed, the name 'Participant' evokes a call to action.)"

According to The Hollywood Reporter, in 2014 Skoll funded the creation of the Skoll Center for Social Impact Entertainment at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, saying at the time: "I founded Participant Media in the belief that a story well told has the power to ignite positive social change. This new center at UCLA TFT is an extension of that vision, with the goal of empowering a new generation and elevating storytelling as a tool to create impact and empower people to connect to the social issues that can have a profound impact on our world."

With an estimated net worth of US$4 billion (as of December 2016), Skoll was ranked by Forbes as the 7th wealthiest Canadian and 134th in the United States.

Through his film production company, Participant–of which he is founder, owner, and chairman–he has produced numerous critically acclaimed films.

Skoll has served as Executive Producer or Producer on nearly 100 Participant films, including Spotlight, Roma, and American Factory, and as of 2019 Participant has won 18 Oscars and received 73 Academy Award nominations.

In March 2019, Participant and the Skoll Center for Social Impact Entertainment released a report, "The State of Social Impact Entertainment", that said: "social impact entertainment — narrative and documentary film, television, theater, and emerging forms that engage audiences in solving real-world challenges — is not a fad but the future of the entertainment industry."

In 2019, on behalf of Participant, Skoll and Participant CEO David Linde accepted the newly created TIFF Impact Award from the Toronto International Film Festival; in 2020 the award was renamed the Jeff Skoll Award in Impact Media, and has continued to be awarded to filmmakers whose work has had a social impact as part of the TIFF Tribute Awards.

Skoll is a recipient of the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy, and a Giving Pledge signatory.

In 2020, the company received another Academy Award nomination and win for best documentary feature for American Factory.