Chris Anderson is the Curator of the TED Conference, an influential annual gathering of remarkable people. Anderson, who is British, was born in Pakistan in 1957. His parents were medical missionaries and he spent most of his early life in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan before going to public school in England. In 1978 he graduated from
Oxford University, with a 'First' in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. A brief career in journalism followed, including a spell working for a 'pirate' radio station in the Seychelles. Then a bug for computers bit hard and in 1985, with meager personal funding (15,000 UK pounds is the official story), he launched a publishing company devoted to
hobbyist computer magazines. Future Publishing (based in Bath, UK) rapidly grew and in 1994 Anderson moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and continued to launch magazines including PC Gamer, MacAddict and
Business 2.0, and websites such as the games portal IGN.com. Future grew to more than 130 magazines and more than 1500 employees. It floated on the London stockmarket in 1999 and at its peak had a market capitalization above $2 billion.

In 2001 Anderson left Future to pursue innovation in the nonprofit world. In 1995 he had started a private foundation, The Sapling Foundation, whose goals were to leverage the power of ideas, media, technology and markets to find new solutions to tough global problems, such as poverty and environmental issues. Anderson believed that the TED attendees, with their broad reach of talent and resources, were perfectly placed to advance these goals, and the
foundation successfully acquired the conference at the end of 2001.

Anderson lives and works in downtown New York.

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