Esther Dyson (born 14 July 1951) is a Swiss-born American investor, journalist, author, commentator and philanthropist. She is the executive founder of Wellville, a nonprofit project focused on improving equitable wellbeing. Dyson is also an angel investor focused on health care,

open government Open government is the governing doctrine which sustain that citizens have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight. In its broadest construction, it opposes reason of state and ...

, digital technology, biotechnology, and outer space.George, Don (4 November 1997)
"Road Warrior: Esther Dyson"
. Salon Wanderlust. Retrieved 12 October 2008. "Esther Dyson, one of the preeminent visionaries of the digital age – and a quintessential road warrior [..] She also invests in and sits on the boards of several U.S. start-ups. In addition, Dyson is chairwoman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit civil liberties organization" Dyson's career now focuses on health and she continues to invest in health and technology startups.

Education and early life

Esther Dyson's father was English-born, American-naturalized physicist Freeman Dyson, and her mother was mathematician Verena Huber-Dyson, of Swiss parentage; her brother is science historian George Dyson (science historian), George Dyson. She was educated at Harvard University where she studied economics and wrote for ''The Harvard Crimson''.

Career

After graduating she joined Forbes as a fact-checker and quickly rose to reporter. In 1977, she joined New Court Securities following FedEx, Federal Express and other start-ups. After a stint at Oppenheimer Holdings covering software companies, she moved to Rosen Research in 1982. In 1983, when she bought the company from her employer Benjamin M. Rosen, Ben Rosen, Dyson renamed the company EDventure Holdings and his ''Rosen Electronic Letter'' newsletter ''Release 1.0''. She and business partner Daphne Kis sold EDventure Holdings to CNET Networks in 2004 and left CNET in January 2007. On 7 October 2008, Space Adventures announced that Dyson had paid to train as a back-up spaceflight participant for Charles Simonyi's trip to the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz TMA-14 mission which took place in 2009. In 1997, Dyson wrote that as of that time she had never voted. The tagline of her email signature block reads “Always make new mistakes”.

Publications and business ventures

Currently, Dyson is a board member and active investor in a variety of start-ups, mostly in online services, health care, logistics, artificial intelligence, emerging markets, and space travel.Esther Dyson's Board Seats & Investments
EDventure. Previously, Dyson and her company EDventure Holdings specialized in analyzing the effect of emerging technologies and markets on economies and societies. She produced the following publications on technology: * Release 1.0, her monthly technology-industry newsletter (started by Ben Rosen), published by EDventure Holdings. Until 2006, Dyson wrote most issues herself and edited the others. When she left CNET, the newsletter was picked up by O'Reilly Media, which appointed Jimmy Guterman to edit it and renamed the newsletter Release 2.0. * Rel-EAST, a sister newsletter focused on the technology industry in Eastern Europe. * Release 2.0, her 1997 book on how the Internet affects individuals' lives. Its full title is ''Release 2.0: A design for living in the digital age''. The revision ''Release 2.1'' was published in 1998.

Philanthropy

Dyson is an active member of a number of non-profit and advisory organizations. From 1998 to 2000, she was the founding chairman of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. As of 2004, she sat on its "reform" committee (the At-Large Advisory Committee), dedicated to defining a role for individuals in ICANN's decision-making and governance structures. She opposed ICANN's 2012 expansion of generic top-level domains (gTLDs). She has followed closely the post-Soviet transition of Eastern Europe, from 2002 to 2012 was a member of the Bulgarian President's IT Advisory Council, along with Vint Cerf, George Sadowsky, and Veni Markovski, among others. She has served as a trustee of, and helped fund, emerging organizations such as Glasses for Humanity, Bridges.org, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Eurasia Foundation, StopBadware, and the Sunlight Foundation. Currently, she is a trustee of Charity Navigator, ExpandED Schools (outside-of-class services for kids), the Long Now Foundation, Open Corporates, and The Commons Project, where she chairs the comp and culture committee.

Other pursuits

Dyson was one of the first ten volunteers for George Church’s Personal Genome Project where you can find her complete genome. Dyson has served as a judge for Mayor Michael Bloomberg's NYC BigApps competition in New York.

References

External links

EDventure.com
''official website''
Column archive
at Project Syndicate * * * * * * by Allan Gregg for TVOntario (1997) (See als
programme information
*
Esther Dyson
profile at Space Angels Network * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dyson, Esther 1951 births Living people American expatriates in Switzerland American financial commentators American investors American people of English descent American philanthropists American reporters and correspondents American technology chief executives American technology journalists American technology writers American venture capitalists American women chief executives American women journalists Freeman Dyson Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Naturalized citizens of the United States Writers from Zürich Swiss emigrants to the United States Wired (magazine) people Women business and financial journalists The Harvard Crimson people