Background and career
Anousheh Ansari (Persian: انوشه انصاری; née Raissyan; born September 12, 1966) is an Iranian-American engineer, space tourist, and entrepreneur. Ansari is the CEO of XPRIZE Foundation. Ansari and her family sponsored XPRIZE’s first venture in 1994: the $10 million Ansari XPRIZE. Prior to XPRIZE, Ansari was the CEO and Chairwoman of Prodea Systems, an Internet of Things (IoT) technology firm she co-founded in 2006. While under her leadership, the company earned recognition as one of Inc. Magazine’s 500 fastest-growing companies and Deloitte & Touche’s Fast 500 technology companies.
Ansari was the fourth overall self-funded space tourist and the first self-funded woman to fly to the International Space Station. Her memoir My Dream of Stars, co-written with American engineer Homer Hickam, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2010.
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