About Reframe It

Esther Dyson

Esther Dyson is a fanatic for disclosure and transparency. She began her formal career as a fact-checker for Forbes Magazine, where she learned to respect the role of free information in making markets work. Despite a BA in economics from Harvard (1972), it was also at Forbes that she learned to read a balance sheet – mostly by trying to understand the financial filings of Continental Illinois Realty Trust, a high-flier of its day. She then spent five years as a securities analyst, and got two-thirds of the way towards a CFA before leaving to join and ultimately purchase Release 1.0, the leading high-tech newsletter of its day. She wrote and edited Release 1.0 until 2007. Since selling her business to CNET in 2005 and leaving in early 2007, she has worked fulltime as an investor and board member for a variety of start-ups in information technology, health care/genetics and space travel. She does business as chairman of EDventure Holdings.

Dyson is also active in the non-profit world. She is a director of the Sunlight Foundation, devoted to transparency in government, and she is about to publish her full genome and all her health records online, as part of the Personal Genome Project. She also sits on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy.