Who

Esther Dyson has been a leading technology visionary for two decades. In fact, she was working with the internet years before you even knew it existed.

Backstory

The daughter of a physicist and a mathematician, Dyson spent her early working life as a journalist (she was as a fact-checker and reporter at Forbes) and then spent time in the late '70s as an investment analyst with a firm that managed investments for the Rothschild family. Following a stint at Oppenheimer, she joined Ben Rosen's Rosen Research. Dyson eventually purchased the company from her boss (Rosen, for his part, went on to finance Compaq and serve as its founding chairman) and she renamed the company EDventure Holdings. One of the earliest tech speakers and commentators on the web, Dyson produced a popular tech-industry newsletter (Release 1.0) and organized regular conferences and events for the industry. She quickly became one of the best connected players in Silicon Valley (despite the fact she lives in New York) and both an in-demand speaker and board member.

Recently

In 2004, Dyson sold EDVenture to CNET for an undisclosed amount, but she stayed on until 2007, when left to advise several start-ups close to her heart, including several in the commercial space travel sector. (She's put money into Space Adventures, which offers trips to the moon at the bargain price of $100 million.) She's also quietly invested in a handful of Web 2.0 companies, like Technorati, Flickr.com, Scott Heiferman's MeetUp.com, Dotomi, Visible Path, Eventful.com, Vizu, Outside.in, DIY genomic analysis service 23andMe, and Riya.

Pet causes

Dyson has long been involved with non-profits that support medical research and foster democracy in Eastern Europe. One of her more recent causes is the Sunlight Foundation, which was founded in 2006 to track the activities of U.S. politicians. The organization took its name from a quote by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants."

Personal

Dyson lives on East 12th Street.

For the record

The nearly 60-year-old Dyson never learned how to drive. She has to be chauffeured to and from her speaking engagements.