Jose Suarez is the founder of Suarez & Associates, LLC, an innovation, investment and advisory firm based in Connecticut.

Suarez & Associates creates companies and advises and makes investments in businesses that solve large problems, leverage existing networks (such as the Internet), can scale rapidly, and are good for the world. Examples include yappr.com, an international, language-learning social community, MediaBids.com, a marketplace for efficiently buying and selling print media advertising, and YourTinnitus.com, a website and medical device company bringing information and new technology to those suffering from tinnitus.

Suarez & Associates serves as an investment-banker advisor to a few, select clients such as Walker Digital, a privately-held, innovation laboratory based in Stamford, Connecticut, founded by prolific inventor Jay Walker. For Walker Digital, Mr. Suarez has secured over $250 million in royalties and investments from industry leaders seeking to partner with it or license its technology. He also restructured over $350 million of Walker Digital's capital during the burst of the Internet bubble.

Mr. Suarez is the former President & COO of Walker Digital, where he managed the creation of a portfolio of more than 1,000 issued and pending U.S. and international patents across a broad range of industries, including gaming, retail, vending, travel, credit card, telecom and ecommerce. He brought many of these innovations to market through licenses, strategic partnerships, and by funding and launching companies that leverage the IP. Walker Digital is best known as the creator of priceline.com, the Internet-based “name-your-own-price” company. Prior to Walker Digital, Mr. Suarez was the start-up COO and General Manager of Priceline WebHouse Club, a titanic $400-million venture to extend the priceline.com model into groceries and gasoline.

Mr. Suarez has started, operated and sold numerous businesses, including an electronic payment processing company and manufacturing plants employing thousands of people throughout Central America. A former real estate developer, Mr. Suarez started his professional career at GE, where he created computer simulation models of manufacturing processes and factories.

Mr. Suarez was born in El Salvador and emigrated to the United States during his country's civil war to attend college. He graduated valedictorian with a 4.00 grade-point-average from Virginia Tech holding a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. He also holds a Master's degree in Business Administration from The Wharton School.

Mr. Suarez, a TEDster, enjoys traveling (he has visited both the Arctic and the Antarctic), is forty-seven and an avid ultra-runner, who completed the 2007 Western States'100 Mile Endurance Run across the Sierra Nevada in 27 hours and is now training to complete it again in 2010 in under 24 hours. Jose and his wife Trish have one son and live in Fairfield County, Connecticut.