Zenia Tata is an impact and innovation strategist, a trained futurist and a humanitarian who is passionate about tapping the vastness of human potential to tackle the planet's most vexing problems.
Zenia has been leading innovation projects and advising on sustainable impact initiatives as a Venture Partner and Strategic Advisor for Kitty Hawk Ventures, MAKR Venture Fund, Pure Technologies, Breakthrough Victoria, a 2-billion-dollar impact investment fund for the Prime Minister’s Office of Australia, an affordable and sustainable housing design project for Emaar Properties through ExO Mesh; and sustainability related consulting projects globally for BCG.
Zenia spent a decade as Chief Impact Officer at XPRIZE, where she created a new prize development methodology and designed more than 25 different innovation challenges to incentivize development of moonshot technologies in areas such as hydrogen energy, carbon dioxide removal, zero-waste mining, alternate proteins, desalination, age-reversal, and water abundance. During this time, she trained as a futurist and launched XPRIZE’s future foresight practice, which produced deeply researched impact roadmaps which outlined the breakthroughs necessary to achieve preferred future states in various sectors.
Before XPRIZE, Zenia served as Executive Director of International Development Enterprises (iDE) USA, a nonprofit company that creates market-based approaches to help impoverished farmers in 20 developing countries generate income. Her proudest achievement was iDE’s ability to lift 24 million farm families out of the cycle of poverty.
A sense of adventure and an explorer’s mindset runs through Zenia’s life and work. Growing up in Bombay she dreamt of becoming an astronaut, before becoming one of the few women in the ‘80s to become a pilot. Her love of the outdoors and extreme sports are reflected in her bold innovation designs which are influenced as much by bio mimicry as they are by the confluence of exponential technologies.
Zenia is bold, brimming with optimism and determined to change the world.
