Esther Dyson

Esther Dyson(@edyson on twitter)  is executive founder of Way to Wellville (@WaytoWellville), a 10-year project to help US communities to dramatically improve the health of their residents, and to develop new business models for the cultivation of health.  Overall, Dyson works to leverage new business models, new technologies and new markets (both economic and political).  On the aerospace front,  she lived in Star City outside Moscow, Russia, training as a backup cosmonaut, from October 2008 to March 2009.  Shortly after her return, she became a member of NASA’s Advisory Council and later chairman of its Technology and Innovation Committee, serving from 2010 to 2012.  Her investments in the space include Space Adventures/Zero-G, XCOR Aerospace, ICON Aircraft, Nanoracks and WorldView.  She was the first “patron” of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, and is a charter member of the Space Angels Network.  She has flown weightless six or seven times, mostly on Zero-G as well as once, she says, during her flight training, she says, "where their goal is to get you sick.  They almost succeeded!" Apart from this brief sabbatical, she is an active board member for a variety of companies, including 23andMe, Luxoft,  Meetup, Pressreader, Voxiva (the company behind text4baby.org),  XCOR Aerospace and Yandex (Russia - YNDX).  Her past investments have included Medstory and Powerset (sold to Microsoft), Flickr and del.icio.us (sold to Yahoo!), Brightmail (sold to Symantec), Vizu (sold to Nielsen), Basis Science (sold to Intel) and Eventful (sold to CBS).  Her current investments include AdKeeper, AnchorFree, ChallengePost,  Cognitive Match, Crowdbooster, Evernote, Fancy, Factual, Flattr (Sweden), GoodData, GridPoint, init.ai, Jana, LinkedIn (LNKD), Linqia, Payperks,  RockTech, Square  in information services; AlterGeo, Ostrovok, TerraLink and Zingaya in Russia; Applied Proteomics,  Genomera, GeriJoy,  HealthEngage, Health Loop, HealthTap, i2Dx Keas, Medico, Medivo, Modria, Omada Health, Organized Wisdom, PatientsLikeMe, PatientsKnowBest (UK), Resilient, Tocagen, Valkee (Finland) and Vita Portal in health.   Dyson  also sits on the boards of several nonprofits, including the Long Now Foundation, the Sunlight Foundation and the Personal Genome Project and is a patron of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.  She has a BA in economics from Harvard and started her serious career as a fact-checker/reporter for Forbes Magazine (1974-77).  From 1977 to 1982 she worked on Wall Street as a securities analyst, covering companies such as Federal Express, Apple Computer and Electronic Data Systems.  From 1983 to 2004 she wrote/edited Release 1.0, a monthly analysis of the PC/Internet business, and ran the yearly PC Forum, the industry's leading executive conference (no sponsors), as head of her own company EDventure Holdings.  She sold EDventure to CNET in 2004 and worked there for two years before going completely independent.  Along the way, she served as founding (non-exec) chairman of ICANN from 1998 to 2000. In addition, she wrote the best-selling, widely translated book "Release 2.0: A design for living in the digital age," published by Broadway Books, in 1997.  She posts photos at www.flickr.com/photos/edyson.