Esther Dyson

ADVISORY COUNCIL

Esther Dyson (@edyson on twitter) currently works as a volunteer for Wellville, the 10-year nonprofit project focused on fostering health, equity and long-term thinking in five small US communities (www.wellville.net).  In her spare time, she is an active investor in and advocate for health, logistics, AI, the circle economy and the exploration of space.  She was an early investor in Zero-G, Space Adventures, Nanoracks (now part of Voyager), Made in Space, XCOR Aerospace (a learning experience), Space Perspectives, Airship Ventures and ICON Aircraft, and is also a current investor in SpaceX.  For six months from 2008 to 2009, she trained in Star City at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, as a backup to two-time space tourist Charles Simonyi.  From 2010 to 2012, she sat on NASA’s Advisory Council and chaired the Technology Committee, under Administrator Charlie Bolden.  

She started her career as a fact-checker for Forbes Magazine, and considers asking questions to be her primary qualification for just about everything she has ever done.  Her motto: “Always make new mistakes!”  She was founding chair of ICANN (which oversees the Internet’s address and domain name systems), and owns the domain name presentwithoutleave.org.