Building A Future That Matters...

Erik Lindbergh, grandson of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, is a commercial pilot and certified flight instructor, an artist and a speaker. He serves on a number of Non-Profit boards including the Lindbergh Foundation, The XPRIZE Foundation and the Aviation High School in Seattle.

Erik serves as a Trustee and Vice President of the X PRIZE Foundation, a non-profit organization that stimulates the creation of a new generation of launch vehicles designed to carry passengers into space. The X PRIZE is fashioned after the Orteig Prize, the aviation incentive prize won by Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight in 1927, which created the now $250 billion aviation industry. 

A graduate of Emery Aviation College where he received his Aeronautical Science degree, Erik retraced his grandfather’s solo flight from New York to Paris in 2002 in a Lancair Certified airplane, which later became Columba. This epic personal journey documented by the History Channel, raised over one million dollars for three charities, garnered half a billion media impressions for the XPRIZE Foundation and prompted a call from the President of the United States for inspiring the country after the tragedy of September 11th. 

Erik also suffers from rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a progressive autoimmune disease. RA crippled Erik for 15 years and only recently has he been active again. With the help of a breakthrough biotech drug, Enbrel, Erik has his life back and is in pursuit of his dreams. Using his experience with RA, he now serves as a spokesperson for the Arthritis Foundation, working to educate others about RA.

His most recent endeavour is LEAP, The Lindbergh Electric Airplane Prize. The program is a suite of new technology awards designed to stimulate meaningful advances in the fledgling electric aircraft industry.

LEAP will bring electric flight to more people and serves as a vehicle for creating a powerful project-based curriculum that will address the need for effective science, technology, engineering and math education.

FMI: www.xprize.org, www.aero-tv.net, www.youtube.com/aerotvnetwork, http://twitter.com/AeroNews