{"id":18309,"date":"2018-10-18T23:17:45","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T15:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/12-years-after-her-trip-to-space-anousheh-ansari-takes-over-as-the-ceo-of-xprize\/"},"modified":"2018-10-18T23:17:45","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T15:17:45","slug":"12-years-after-her-trip-to-space-anousheh-ansari-takes-over-as-the-ceo-of-xprize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/12-years-after-her-trip-to-space-anousheh-ansari-takes-over-as-the-ceo-of-xprize\/","title":{"rendered":"12 years after her trip to space, Anousheh Ansari takes over as the CEO of XPRIZE"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_456262\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-456262\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-456262\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181018-ansari-630x429.jpg\" alt=\"Anousheh Ansari and Peter Diamandis\" width=\"630\" height=\"429\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181018-ansari-630x429.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181018-ansari-768x523.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181018-ansari-1260x858.jpg 1260w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181018-ansari.jpg 1743w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-456262\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Anousheh Ansari, the newly named CEO of XPRIZE, comes on stage with co-founder Peter Diamandis at an XPRIZE Visioneering Summit in Los Angeles. (XPRIZE via Twitter)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In 2004, Iranian-American entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari helped fund the $10 million Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight. In 2006, she traveled to the International Space Station, becoming the first Muslim woman to go into orbit. Now she\u2019s playing a leading role in the XPRIZE saga once again as the California-based foundation\u2019s CEO.<\/p>\n<p>Ansari\u2019s ascension to executive leadership was announced today during the annual XPRIZE Visioneering Summit in Los Angeles, where 10 teams are vying for a chance to have their ideas turned into multimillion-dollar technological challenges.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs I take on the helm at XPRIZE, I feel the same exhilaration as I did the day I was sitting in my capsule atop of my Russian Soyuz rocket \u2013 waiting impatiently to be launched into the infinity of the universe that I had dreamed about as a child, and in nervous anticipation of the enormous possibilities in front of me,\u201d Ansari, 52, said in a news release.<\/p>\n<p>Ansari takes over from XPRIZE co-founder Peter Diamandis, who\u2019ll continue in his role as executive chairman.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe XPRIZE model of crowdsourcing innovation is as important as ever, as increased access to exponential technologies is truly democratizing the ability for&nbsp;<i>anyone<\/i>&nbsp;to solve today\u2019s most pressing issues,\u201d Diamandis said. \u201cI have tremendous confidence in Anousheh to help lead XPRIZE during its next stage of evolution.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"What I Saw From The Space Station | Anousheh Ansari | XPRIZE Insights\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rSQlIrVzcRE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Ansari X Prize was the foundation\u2019s first incentive-prize venture&nbsp;\u2013 proposed by Diamandis in 1995, and won in 2004 by the team behind the SpaceShipOne rocket plane with backing from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. The Ansari family contributed the cash required to buy a \u201chole-in-one\u201d insurance policy that paid out the $10 million.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, XPRIZE has organized a series of sponsored competitions, focusing on technologies ranging from super-efficient automobiles to \u201cStar Trek\u201d-inspired medical tricorders and wearable safety devices. Its biggest challenge, the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize, expired this year without a big winner.<\/p>\n<p>Ansari and other family members made their first fortune with Telecom Technologies. Since 2006, she has been CEO of Prodea Systems, a Texas-based technology firm specializing in the Internet of Things. She\u2019ll continue to serve as Prodea\u2019s executive chairwoman.<\/p>\n<p>Her 11-day trip to the space station in 2006 was arranged through Space Adventures, which has sent six other individuals into orbit. (Seattle-area software pioneer Charles Simonyi went twice, in 2007 and 2009.)<\/p>\n<p>Ansari has long served on XPRIZE\u2019s board of directors. She\u2019s also a co-founder of The Billion Dollar Fund for Women, which aims to invest $1 billion in women-founded companies by 2020. Her autobiography, titled \u201cMy Dream of Stars: From Daughter of Iran to Space Pioneer,\u201d was published in 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anousheh Ansari, the newly named CEO of XPRIZE, comes on stage with co-founder Peter Diamandis at an XPRIZE Visioneering Summit in Los Angeles. (XPRIZE via Twitter) In 2004, Iranian-American entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari helped fund the $10 million Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight. In 2006, she traveled to the International Space Station, becoming the first [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5141,291,5142,5034],"class_list":["post-18309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-anousheh-ansari","tag-commercial-space","tag-x-prize","tag-xprize"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18309"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}