Aenne Burda Award 2009 for Esther Dyson

For the fourth time DLD is proud to present the Aenne Burda Award. The award was named after Dr. Hubert Burda's mother Aenne Burda who created Burda Moden and build the ground for today's success of Burda. Host Steffi Czerny even called her one of the first feminists in Germany. If you like to learn more about this amazing woman visit this website. The award is meant to honor exceptional women and thus encourage and inspire other women to believe in what they are doing and dare to be successful. Previous winners have been Marissa Mayer, Caterina Fake and Martha Stewart. This years winner is another extraordinary woman: Esther Dyson. From her DLD page:

Esther Dyson is the epitome of the DLD spirit - working not just to study or to profit from the future, but to help create it. While continuing a long career analyzing, investing in and nurturing Internet start-ups, she has now added space travel and genetics to her portfolio. She is currently training as a cosmonaut at Star City in Russia, as a backup to Charles Simonyi, the creator of Microsoft Word.

Russia was a point of interest in both Hubert Burda's and Esther's words: Hubert Burda talked about how Aenne Burda and Esther knew each other and Esther shared the story how she found one of the Burda patterns in an an old book in Russia. Her living in Russia for her training for going to space also was a good for a small joke when receiving the statue: Presented by Hubert Burda's wife Maria Furtwängler with the words "I hope this will be helpful in space" Esther Dyson replied "It won't weight anything". See the reactions on twitter about Esther Dyson.