Big Prizes and Bigger Ideas

A student describes her team’s whirlwind involvement and experience with the XPRIZE Connect Youth Ambassador Program

Our very own New Roads STEM Club was offered the opportunity to participate in XPRIZE Visioneering 2023 this past November, an event where bright and successful minds showcase their solutions to pressing world problems and potential sponsors come to see them.

XPRIZE is a non-profit organization and initiative that generates incentivised competitions to solve some of the world’s most prevalent issues. Founded in Culver City by a graduate of both MIT and Harvard Medical School, Peter Diamandis, it came out with a bang in 1994 with a 10 million dollar competition that challenged innovators to make private space flight possible. Since then it has worked with 10,000 thousand individuals from 148 countries and through 25 competitions, has raised a collective 284 million dollars.

XPRIZE has “brain trusts,” aka, industry leading professionals that come up with a prize/competition concept, and then has them pitch it at their ‘visioneering’ events. At these places, sponsors and other XPRIZE affiliated people will choose to support an idea, which turns it into an XPRIZE. Each competition will have very specific criteria that hundreds of people throughout the world will strive to meet in order to win the challenge.

One such XPRIZE is the $100 million prize for carbon removal, where winning teams demonstrate that they can remove carbon dioxide at the level of 1,000 tons per year and present a plan to sustainably remove gigatonnes of CO2 in the future.

XPRIZE’s new and innovative youth program is called XPRIZE Connect.

“XPRIZE Connect provides an enriched learning experience to students, equipping them with skills to tackle the biggest challenges facing today’s youth by harnessing the principles of an abundance mindset, exponential thinking, and a moonshot approach,” says XPRIZE Connect Program Director Monica Groves.

In early September we began working on a sequence of online modules that taught us how to formulate a prize concept. We spent a couple hours every week listening to Ted Talks, reading articles, having group discussion and completing guided writing assignments that expressed our ideas on paper.

By early November we presented at Visioneering 2023 about our competition concept. It would have companies or cities design and implement large-scale regenerative gardens in urban environments in the hopes of preserving biodiversity and fighting climate change.

Though only one other team participated in Visioneering 2023 with the NRS STEM Club, multiple schools underwent the online experience. In the future, XPRIZE intends to expand its reach to schools and offer Connect to more students.

Lucy Dehnert, Bella Shriver and I were asked to be a pilot partner for Connect because of our club affiliations and New Roads connections to XPRIZE. In the end, we were one of the two schools who completed their work in time to present at Visioneering, where we met billionaires, dukes, famous, and very academically successful people.

(Photo courtesy of Daniel Fiqueroa)

Dehnert and the author speaking with a member of Cambridge’s administration staff.

“Those attending Visioneering might experience a range of emotions and thoughts, such as excitement, inspiration, and the challenge of addressing complex global issues. It’s a collaborative and creative environment where participants are encouraged to think critically and innovatively,” said Harvard Westlake Senior Derek Esrailian, who attended Visioneering 2023 in a Connect team.

For me, it was an experience that sparked the fire of possibility. Many of the people there were fighting to get challenging goals realized, creating a welcoming space for others to do the same. It also encouraged us to expand our communication skills and become better presenters.

(Photo courtesy of Daniel Figueroa)

Left to right: Derek Esrailian, Andrew Esrailian, Anousheh Ansari, Lucy Dehnert, Bodhi Milano. 

“Simply being able to be a part of this event showed me that it’s possible for students to truly make differences in the world and have our thoughts and ideas heard and appreciated,” said New Roads Sophomore and Vice President of STEM Club Lucy Dehnert.

There was a wide variety of people who heard our ideas at visioneering: many educators and leading STEM professionals but also sponsors and interested parties.

One such person is Duke Harry, who we got to speak with and have a conversation about the state of world leaders and other prevalent issues. Another is Anousheh Ansari, the first Iranian to go to space. She was the co-founder and former CEO of Telecom Technologies inc., along with being the fourth self-funded astronaut and an electrical engineer. We also spoke with Aloe Blacc, a nominated grammy award winning singer-songwriter.

(Photo courtesy of Daniel Figueroa)

Left to right: Andrew Esrailian, Derek Esrailian, Bodhi Milano, Lucy Dehnert, Anousheh Ansari speaking with Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex

In general, it seemed to me that XPRIZE Visioneering and XPRIZE more specifically draws a group of diverse, forward thinking and actionable people, working together to create change.