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Future Positive

The Future of Conservation with Harrison Ford & Wes Bush

Season 2, Ep. 1
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NEW SEASON


Welcome to Future Positive from XPRIZE. This season we aim to bring you the most future-forward topics, covering everything from AI to avatars, to climate change, and more. We will share conversations from game-changing leaders, tech entrepreneurs and heavyweights from the creative industry - revealing their inspirations, and how and why they will change the world.


Captured during Visioneering at Paramount Studios, Peter H. Diamandis is joined by Harrison Ford and Wes Bush from Conservation International. In a thrilling discussion, they discuss the urgency to change the economics, behaviors and political will in order to save the planet. It requires the support of everyone, and will rely on technological innovation and new economic incentives to move in the right direction, quickly. 


Recently named by Fortune as one of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders,” Peter H. Diamandis is the founder and executive chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, which leads the world in designing and operating large-scale incentive competitions. He is also the executive founder of Singularity University, a graduate-level Silicon Valley institution that counsels the world's leaders on exponentially growing technologies. As an entrepreneur, Diamandis has started over 20 companies in the areas of longevity, space, venture capital and education. He is cofounder of BOLD Capital Partners, a venture fund with $250M investing in exponential technologies, and co-founder and Vice Chairman of Celularity, Inc., a cellular therapeutics company. Diamandis is a New York Times Bestselling author of two books: Abundance – The Future Is Better Than You Think and BOLD – How to go Big, Create Wealth & Impact the World. His newest book in this series of exponential technologies—The Future is Faster Than You Think—was released on January 28, 2020. He earned degrees in molecular genetics and aerospace engineering from the MIT and holds an M.D. from Harvard Medical School. Diamandis’ favorite saying is “the best way to predict the future is to create it yourself.”


Harrison Ford has become one of the most popular and acclaimed actors of our time. His works include 35 feature films, ten of which have exceeded $100 million each at the box office. Through his starring roles in such cinematic blockbusters as the Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies, The Fugitive, Air Force One, Patriot Games and K-19 he has come to embody the quintessential hero for moviegoers around the world. Strongly committed to environmental concerns, Harrison Ford has served on the board of Conservation International for more than 10 years, actively participating in its design and growth. During this time CI has emerged as a leading force in global conservation. He presently serves as vice chair of the board and is on CI's Executive Committee.

He has played an instrumental role in the establishment at CI of the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, the first early warning system for global conservation efforts. Additionally, he played a key role in the design and development of CI's Center for Environmental Leadership in Business, a coalition of conservation and business interests searching for ways to reduce the impact of development on the earth's biodiversity. Mr. Ford serves as a board member of Conservation International's Global Conservation Fund, which has secured the protection of over 40,000,000 acres on 3 continents in the past 18 months. Mr. Ford lives in Jackson, Wyoming, where he donated 389 acres of his property for a conservation easement to the Jackson Hole Land Trust.


Prior to becoming CEO of Northrop Grumman, Wes Bush held numerous leadership roles at Northrop Grumman including President and Chief Operating Officer; Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; and President of the Space Technology division. He joined the company as a systems engineer at TRW in 1987 and was the President and CEO of TRW’s Aeronautical Systems business when Northrop Grumman acquired the TRW in 2002. He earlier worked at Aerospace Corporation and Comsat Labs. Bush received both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also a graduate of the Executive Management Program at UCLA. He serves on the board of directors of Conservation International and the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation, and he chairs the boards of the Aerospace Industries Association and the Business-Higher Education Forum.


Links: 

https://www.conservation.org/

https://xprize.org/blog

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