Anousheh Ansari

Anousheh Ansari was born Anousheh Raissyan in Mashhad, Iran, on September 12, 1966. She moved to Tehran shortly after her birth and experienced significant political turmoil, including the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and the Iran-Iraq War, during her early years. At the age of seven, she attended a French Catholic school, Jeanne d’Arc, where she learned both Farsi and French. Driven by a childhood fascination with space, Ansari immigrated to the United States in 1984 as a teenager, settling in Northern Virginia. She pursued her education diligently, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering and computer science from George Mason University, followed by a Master of Science degree from George Washington University. She also gained a working knowledge of Russian for her spaceflight experience, in addition to her fluency in Persian, English, and French.

After completing her education, Ansari began her career at MCI, where she met her husband, Hamid Ansari, whom she married in 1991. In 1993, she co-founded Telecom Technologies Inc. with her husband and brother-in-law, Amir Ansari, leveraging their personal savings as the U.S. telecommunications industry underwent deregulation. The company specialized in softswitch technology, which enabled telecommunication service providers to improve system performance, reduce operating costs, and generate new revenue by integrating existing networks with next-generation, application-centric networks via software switch technology. In 2001, Telecom Technologies Inc. was acquired by Sonus Networks, Inc. in a stock-for-stock transaction. Following the acquisition, Anousheh Ansari became a vice president at Sonus and General Manager of its new INtelligentIP division.

In 2006, Anousheh Ansari co-founded Prodea Systems, a technology and services management company, where she served as Chairwoman and CEO. That same year, on September 18, 2006, she achieved a lifelong dream by becoming the first Iranian person, the fourth self-funded space tourist, and the first self-funded woman to fly to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. During her 10-day mission, she conducted experiments for the European Space Agency and became the first person to publish a weblog from space. Her family’s significant contribution to the X PRIZE Foundation in 2004 led to the renaming of the competition to the Ansari X PRIZE. She later became CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation in 2018, where she has continued to drive innovation and address global challenges.