Pierre Omidyar

Pierre Morad Omidyar (born June 21, 1967) is a French-Iranian American entrepreneur and philanthropist/economist, and the founder/chairman of the eBay auction site. Omidyar and his wife Pam are well-known philanthropists who founded Omidyar Network in 2004 in order to expand their efforts beyond non-profits to include for-profits and public policy. Omidyar was born in Paris, France to Iranian immigrant parents who had been sent by his grandparents to attend university there. His mother Elahé Mir-Djalali Omidyar, who did her doctorate in linguistics at the Sorbonne, is herself a well-known academic. His father was a surgeon. The family moved to the US when Omidyar was six. Pierre grew up in Washington, D.C., where he attended the Potomac...