The XPRIZE Special Series

Dr. Peter Diamandis was recently named by Fortune Magazine as one of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders. In this episode you'll hear a behind-the-scenes conversation between Erik and Peter about what it was really like to launch the 10-year-overnight-success of XPRIZE.

Dr. Jyotika Virmani is Executive Director of Planet and Environment at XPRIZE and the Executive Director for the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, to incentivize deep-sea technology to map the sea floor rapidly, accurately, and at a higher resolution. She joined XPRIZE in 2014 as the Technical Director for the Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE, a competition advancing pH sensor development to measure ocean acidification. Before joining XPRIZE, Dr. Virmani served as the Associate Director of the Florida Institute of Oceanography and as a Senior Scientist at the UK Met Office.

Gregg Maryniak is the Co-Founder and Secretary of the XPRIZE Foundation and a member of the Board of Directors. He was the Foundation’s original Executive Director through 2005 (and has almost completely recovered from that experience.)

Anousheh Ansari is CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation, the world’s leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges. Ansari, along with her family, sponsored the organization’s first competition, the Ansari XPRIZE, a $10 million competition that ignited a new era for commercial spaceflight. Since then, she has served on XPRIZE’s Board of Directors.

Emily Musil Church is a strategist and thought leader combining the worlds of research, innovation, and global development. Dr. Church is the Executive Director of the Global Learning XPRIZE, and also works on education and outreach for the Foundation.