Jay is a cofounder of GBN and dean and chief academic officer at the Presidio School of Management in San Francisco. His own research and work have focused primarily on the role that human values and changing motivations play in business decision-making and strategy, with a particular focus on health care, education, and sustainability. He has pursued these interests in collaboration with Peter Schwartz since 1979, when he joined SRI International, and from 1988-2008 with GBN, where he led dozens of scenario projects for public and private sector clients in health care and life sciences and led GBN’s scenario training courses. While at SRI, Jay split his time between developing future scenarios for strategic planning and serving as director of research for the Values and Lifestyles (VALS) Program, a consumer segmentation system used in market research. He also authored monographs on social, political, and demographic trends affecting the values of American consumers.

Jay's work builds on his background as a philosopher. He taught at the University of Texas, Williams College, and for seven years at Yale, where he received his PhD in 1968. He is the author of Facing The Fold: Essays on Scenario Planning (2011), Creating Better Futures: Scenario Planning as a Tool for a Better Tomorrow (2002), Living Without a Goal (1995), Many Dimensional Man (1977); co-author of China' Futures (2001) and Seven Tomorrows (1980); and editor of Self and World (1971, 1980), and Revisioning Philosophy (1991). He is currently at work on a book on emergent systems, e.g. consciousness, leadership, and wealth.