Jimmy Wales the Nupedia and Wikipedia projects until Bomis discontinued funding for his position in February 2002; Sanger resigned as editor-in-chief of Nupedia and as "chief organizer" of Wikipedia on March 1 of that year. Early on, Bomis supplied the financial backing for Wikipedia, and entertained the notion of placing advertisements on Wikipedia before costs were reduced with Sanger's departure and plans for a nonprofit foundation were advanced instead. Wales has asserted that he is the sole founder of Wikipedia, and has publicly disputed Sanger's designation as a co-founder. Sanger and Wales were identified as co-founders at least as early as September
Jimmy Wales how to make taxpayer-funded academic research available on the internet at no cost. His role reportedly involved working as "an unpaid advisor on crowdsourcing and opening up policymaking", and advising the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills and the UK research councils on distributing research. In January 2014, it was announced that Wales had joined The People's Operator as co-chair of the mobile phone network. On March 21, 2014, Wales spoke on a panel at a Clinton Global Initiative University conference held at Arizona State University, along with John McCain, Saudi Arabian women's rights activist Manal al-Sharif and Harvard University