Anousheh Ansari

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.

Born Anousheh Raissyan in Mashhad, Iran, she and her parents moved to Tehran shortly afterward. When Ansari was six years old, her parents divorced. Ansari has a sister, Atousa Raissyan, who is five years younger. At the age of six, Ansari would visit her grandparents and sleep overnight on the balcony, as there was no air conditioning. Ansari would gaze at the night sky and was very curious about space. In Tehran, at the age of seven, Ansari attended a French Catholic school called Jeanne d’Arc. Half of the day was taught in Farsi while the other half was taught in French. She witnessed the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and recalls memories of "hearing gun shots, screaming, people being killed, and explosions". From then on until the Iran–Iraq War, Ansari would have to take shelter in the basement of her apartment building, where she was the eldest of the children taking shelter. She would narrate stories to them, offering them comfort, which distracted them from the noise of bombs being dropped outside. Ansari immigrated to the United States in 1984 as a teenager, and attended a high school in Northern Virginia, Lake Braddock. Apart from her native Persian, she is fluent in English and French and acquired a working knowledge of Russian for her spaceflight experience.

She received her Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering and computer science at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and her master's degree at George Washington University in Washington D.C.

After graduation, Raissyan began work at MCI, where she met her future husband, Hamid Ansari. They married in 1991.

In 1993, she persuaded her husband and her brother-in-law, Amir Ansari, to co-found Telecom Technologies Inc., using their savings and corporate retirement accounts, as deregulation happened in the US telecommunications industry. The company was a supplier of softswitch technology that enabled telecom "service providers to enhance system performance, lower operating costs and furnish new revenue opportunities." The company, headquartered in Richardson, Texas, offered products that allowed the integration between existing telecom networks and application-centric, next-generation networks via software switch technology. Telecom Technologies was acquired by Sonus Networks, Inc. in 2001 in a stock-for-stock transaction for 10.8 million shares of Sonus stock valued at approx. $440M at that time. Anousheh Ansari became "a vice president of Sonus and general manager of Sonus' new INtelligentIP division."

In 2006, she co-founded Prodea Systems, becoming its chairwoman and CEO. Prodea is a technology and services management company. Prodea is a privately held company formed by the Ansari family with development centers in Richardson, Texas, and Silicon Valley.

Ansari has expressed that she does not consider herself a "space tourist" and prefers the title of "spaceflight participant."

Ansari is a member of the X PRIZE Foundation's Vision Circle, as well as its Board of Trustees. Along with her brother-in-law, Amir Ansari, she made a multimillion-dollar contribution to the X PRIZE foundation on May 5, 2004, the 43rd anniversary of Alan Shepard's sub-orbital spaceflight. The X PRIZE has officially renamed the Ansari X PRIZE to honor their donation. Ansari is a spokesperson for the "privatization of space," a process enabling commercially viable companies to government-independently send equipment and people into space for exploration and other purposes.

The Ansari family also invested in a partnership with Space Adventures, Ltd. and the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation (FSA) to create a fleet of suborbital spaceflight vehicles (the Space Adventures Explorer) for global commercial use.

Ansari trained as a backup for Daisuke Enomoto for a Soyuz flight to the International Space Station, through Space Adventures, Ltd. On August 21, 2006, Enomoto was medically disqualified from flying the Soyuz TMA-9 mission that was due to launch the following month. The next day Ansari was elevated to the prime crew.

Asked what she hoped to achieve on her spaceflight, Ansari said, "I hope to inspire everyone—especially young people, women, and young girls all over the world, and in Middle Eastern countries that do not provide women with the same opportunities as men—not to give up their dreams and to pursue them... It may seem impossible to them at times. But I believe they can realize their dreams if they keep it in their hearts, nurture it, and look for opportunities and make those opportunities happen." The day before her departure, she was interviewed on Iran national television for the astronomy show Night's Sky. The hosts wished her success and thanked her on behalf of the Iranians. Ansari in return thanked them.

Ansari has received multiple honors, including the George Mason University Entrepreneurial Excellence Award, the George Washington University Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Southwest Region, and the Horatio Alger Award. While under her leadership, Telecom Technologies, Inc. earned recognition as one of Inc. magazine's 500 fastest-growing companies and one of Deloitte & Touche's Fast 500 technology companies. She was listed in Fortune Magazine's 40 under 40 list in 2001 and honored by Working Woman as the winner of the 2000 National Entrepreneurial Excellence award.

In 2009, she received the first NCWIT Symons Innovator Award given annually by the National Center for Women & Information Technology to honor successful women entrepreneurs in technology.

She received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from her alma mater George Mason University on December 20, 2012.

The Ansari family was honored with an Orbit Award by the National Space Society and Space Tourism Society for underwriting the Ansari X Prize.

In 2010, she was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor recognition of her humanitarian efforts.

Ansari participated as a speaker at the 2010 Honeywell Leadership Academy with Homer Hickam at United States Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama.

In 2009, Ansari was featured in the documentary film Space Tourists by independent Swiss filmmaker Christian Frei about billionaires who paid to ride to the International Space Station aboard Russian spacecraft. The DVD of the film was released in 2011.

She was the commencement speaker and received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Utah Valley University on April 25, 2013.

On February 26, 2017, she and Firouz Naderi represented Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi at the 89th Academy Awards. They accepted the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for The Salesman on Farhadi's behalf. Farhadi did not attend the ceremony due to his opposition to President Trump's immigration ban applying to seven Muslim countries, including Iran. Farhadi selected Ansari and Naderi as his representatives because both are successful Iranian-Americans who immigrated to the US.

Ansari has been on the boards of directors for Make-a-Wish Foundation of North Texas and Collin County Children's Advocacy Center. She has been active with several nonprofit organizations, including the nonprofit Iranian American Women Foundation organization. Other non-profit organizations include Ashoka in its support of social entrepreneurs.

While working at MCI, she met Hamid Ansari. They married in 1991, and reside in Plano, Texas. She is the aunt of American actors Yara Shahidi and Sayeed Shahidi.