Management Team
Board Members
Dr. Peter Diamandis
Dr. Peter H. Diamandis is an international pioneer in the fields of innovation, incentive competitions and commercial space. In 2014 he was named one of "The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders" – by Fortune Magazine.
In the field of Innovation, Diamandis is Founder and Executive Chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, best known for its $10 million Ansari XPRIZE for private spaceflight.
Diamandis is also the Co-Founder and Vice-Chairman of Human Longevity Inc. (HLI), a genomics and cell therapy-based diagnostic and therapeutic company focused on extending the healthy human lifespan. He is also the Executive Founder of Singularity University, a graduate-level Silicon Valley institution that studies exponentially growing technologies, their ability to transform industries and solve humanity’s grand challenges.
In the field of commercial space, Diamandis is Co-Founder/Co-Chairman of Planetary Resources, a company designing spacecraft to enable the detection and prospecting of asteroid for precious materials. He is also the Co-Founder of Space Adventures and Zero-Gravity Corporation.
Diamandis is the New York Times Bestselling author of Abundance – The Future Is Better Than You Think and BOLD – How to go Big, Create Wealth & Impact the World.
He earned an undergraduate degree in Molecular Genetics and a graduate degree in Aerospace Engineering from MIT, and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School.
Diamandis’ mission is to open the space frontier for humanity. His personal motto is: "The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself."
In 2016, the Greek Government honored him by issuing a 1.2 Euro stamp into circulation. Also in 2016, the book How To Make A Spaceship – A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight, Peter’s biography and the story of the XPRIZE was written by Julian Guthrie with a Foreword by Richard Branson and an Afterword by Prof. Stephen Hawking.
W.J. "Billy" Tauzin
Former Congressman W.J. "Billy" Tauzin was one of the most powerful Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives and served 12 terms in the U.S Congress representing Louisiana's 3rd Congressional District before retiring in 2004. Tauzin was Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection in 1997 and was involved in much of the legislation affecting telecommunications and the Internet. Tauzin holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Nicholls State University and a Law Degree from Louisiana State University. Billy Tauzin was named president and chief executive officer of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (www.PhRMA.org) in January 2005 and immediately took up two of the most important causes of his career: To help ensure patients everywhere continue to have access to the miracles of medicines, and to ensure that innovative biopharmaceutical research thrives, improving and saving lives everywhere
Founder and Chairman
Richard Kane
Telecom entrepreneur Richard Kane founded Inc. 500 company Coastal Technologies Group (CTGi) in 1996. His success began at age 17 when he was profiled by the New York Times for innovative developments in security and copy protection. Now, with over 20 years of proven experience in high–performance computing, Kane holds a number patents and copyrights and continues to lead R&D in high-performance computing and artificial intelligence. Spurred on by the belief that the intellectual property developed over this timeframe has direct implications for the burgeoning air taxi industry, Richard directed efforts to apply the framework to aerospace.
Mr. Kane holds patents and pending patents on high speed parallel processing, artificial intelligence, self learning code and air taxi dispatch models. Kane holds a patent on a critical attitude recovery system intended to prevent spatial disorientation accidents.
Richard is a commercial, instrument rated pilot with seven world speed records and one transatlantic single-engine crossing. Kane is a lifetime member of the EAA and AOPA organizations, the latter for contributions to safety education. He is actively involved in the X PRIZE Foundation and has sponsored a 2007 Lindbergh Foundation Grant. Both organizations seek to improve the world and the human condition by striking a balance between technology and the environment while advancing the pace of technological progress in answer to the grand challenges of our time.