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Episode #214

The Sky Below

Maria Franzoni (00:17): Welcome back to The Speaker Show with me, your host, Maria Franzoni. In today’s show, we will be talking to a decorated physician, astronaut bestselling author and tech CEO. And no, I don’t have four guests. I have one, but let me remind you that the speaker show is brought to you by Speakers Associates, the global speaker bureau for the world’s most successful organizations, providing keynote speakers for events, conferences, and summits. My guest today, having trained at Stanford and Harvard has conducted groundbreaking research in space physiology and high altitude of climatization. In 1992, he was selected to join NASA astronaut core and flew five space shuttle missions and conducted seven spacewalks. In October, 2007. He led the space walking team on STS one 20 during which he performed four EVAs. That’s an extra vehicular activity. The final Eva is regarded by many as one of the most challenging and dangerous ever performed.

Maria Franzoni (01:19): The tremendous coordinated effort in orbit and on the ground by mission control has been likened to the space shuttle and space station. Era’s Apollo 13 moment. He’s the only person to have flown both in space and summited Mount Everest. He is a submersible pilot in training, and recently made the first descent into the Messiah volcano in Nicaragua, a prolific inventor. He has contributed to the design of exercise devices built for long duration space flight and several medical technologies. He’s working to commercialize his many medical innovations and consumer products to benefit people around the world. Oh my goodness. This man is phenomenal. Please welcome my guest Scott Parazynski. Scott it’s absolutely wonderful to have you here. How are you today?

Scott Parazynski (02:09): Wonderful to be with you as well. Very excited to chat with you.

Maria Franzoni (02:12): Fantastic. So I dunno what to describe you as do I call you an inventor, an astronaut, an adventurer, a CEO, a pH, is there a physician, is there one word that you respond to one title?

Scott Parazynski (02:25): Well, I, I’m not big on titles, but I guess I would describe myself as someone who really savours the joy of life. You know, life is truly a gift and to not miss out on anything is, is kind of my my credo, you know, I, I think to we’re all on this earth for a finite period of time, and it’s incumbent upon us to to make the most of, of each and every day.

Maria Franzoni (02:54): I think you have done that and are doing that. So I, I would love that. So most children want to be astronauts. Is that something that you had in mind as a child or, or did it happen cause it evolved for you?

Scott Parazynski (03:08): It, it was something that was almost innate with me. I, I was very fortunate. I have to say because my father worked on the Apollo program when I was very young. So I had a front row seat to these amazing times when we were sending astronauts to moon in the late sixties, early seventies. And so I had model rockets and posters on the wall and the opportunity to really, to dive deep into you know, what would it be like to, to one day fly in space? And in fact, even at age five, there, there’s some really cool photos of me holding a little toy rocket. But at that age, I, I dreamt of becoming the, the Neil Armstrong equivalent of, you know, setting the first boot prints on Mars. And although my, my career didn’t ex exactly go on that trajectory. I was very fortunate to fly on five spatial emissions and do some other really wonderful expeditions. And, and of course now we’re in this, this new era of space exploration and, and we really are, I think, on a trajectory dissent humans to, to Mars in the next 10 years or so, which is exhilarating.

Maria Franzoni (04:14): Fantastic. It was someone who doesn’t know very much about being an astronaut. What’s the selection process? Like what is the criteria? What, what, what do you need to be able to do and, and what your characteristics to be an astronaut?

Scott Parazynski (04:28): I recall interviewing for the job. And it, it, they had whittled down from several thousand people down to about 120 for final interviews. And and they brought 20 of us at a time to to Houston for medical examinations and interviews and things of that nature. And I remember looking around this group thinking any one of these 20 people would make wonderful astronauts. And in fact, there’s so many highly qualified people, you know, for the job. I think what it really came down to by the selection committee and, and kind of what I look for in later years is I helped select future classes is just you know, a sense of being a constructive team member. It’s fine in fact, necessary to be a strong individual performer, but if you can’t be part of a high functioning multidisciplinary team you’re probably not someone that, you know, would make a, a great crew member.

Scott Parazynski (05:27): And I think that translates very well to the corporate world. You know, it’s great to have a, a very powerful individual skillset, but if you can’t interface with your colleagues, if you can’t collaborate, if you if you can’t be part of the greater mission you’re probably not meant to be part of this team. So to, to summarize, I guess I would say that it’s having the ability to be a contributing member of a team to be willing to do things that may not be in your, in your job responsibility, but you, you pick up and, and help out whenever and wherever needed.

Maria Franzoni (06:12): It’s all lot about attitude and personality, isn’t it, as opposed to perhaps, you know, any specific education maybe, but that’s, that, that relates really well to business for team and the flexibility of mindset, and you’re trusting other people with your life, aren’t you. So you have to trust quite quickly.

Scott Parazynski (06:31): That that’s right. It it’s it’s an imperative that your, your teammates, not only know your, your skillset but believe that you will be there for them. You know when the, the, the challenging times come and the inevitably they do challenging endeavors, whether it’s going into space climbing a big mountain, or starting a new business venture, you know, they, they’re gonna be, you, you know potholes along the the roadway and you need to be able to adapt to those readily. And certainly in the, the case of space flight you’re, you’re not only always gonna be performing at your very best you know, the, we have this thing called space motion sickness that affects astronauts early in flight. And so I’ve, I’ve been on a couple of flights where, you know, two of six crew members are really unable to perform because they’re, they’re feeling ill. And so everybody else has to pick up and, and you know, do the jobs that they would’ve been doing otherwise. And so you need to be able to, to, to support one another.

Maria Franzoni (07:44): But that sounds a little less glamorous than I’m imagining it now to feel sick and to feel ill, but I can appreciate that must be awful. So you mentioned at the beginning that you were interested in space from the age of five but you must have had, when you finally got out into space, there must have been some, some surprises for you, some things that you weren’t expecting, what were your first impressions and what did you find that you, you weren’t expecting to find?

Scott Parazynski (08:08): I, I felt I was as well prepared as a rookie astronaut, as I could have possibly been. I’d done, you know, hundreds of hours of simulations. I had talked to all of my colleagues who had been there before, I’d been in Centri fusions, jet aircraft flights, parabolic flight in waitlist environments in a training pool. I thought, I know what this is going to be. Like. I’d seen all the IMAX movies. There’s nothing that I could have done to really prepare myself mentally emotionally maybe even, you know, spiritually, you know, it was, it was such a, an overwhelming sense of awe, that you have having that, that global perspective from hundreds of miles above the planet, traveling at 17,500 miles an hour, you’re seeing the earth as a confluence of, of humanity and nature instead of, you know, a globe on a, on a, on a post that, that spins and, and dots on the, the globe that depicts cities, but just the enormity of it, the scale, the the beauty, the the sense of awe that it took, shook me to my soul.

Scott Parazynski (09:28): And I think everyone that has the, the opportunity to fly in space comes back, you know, profoundly changed.

Maria Franzoni (09:35): Oh, that’s wonderful. And must be incredible to see your planet from above it. It must be phenomenal experience if I can understand how you would be moved. So, so tell me in the introduction, I, I mentioned that there was a, an Apollo 13 moment for you in, in an EVA, which I believe is an extra vehicular activity when you are outside, you are actually in space. Can you tell us what happened? I’d love to hear that story.

Scott Parazynski (10:04): Yes. So first off talking about extracurricular activity or space walking which is a bit of a misnomer we on, on orbit on the international space station or on Hubble, we’re actually space crawling. We’re using hand over hand to, to get to wherever we wanna go, but space crawling doesn’t sound nearly as cool as space walking, so that that’s, that’s how it gets its name, but on my fifth and final mission to the international space station, we had a solar panel that had become torn as a result of actually orbital debris. A piece of cosmic junk had clipped a small wire in a solar panel. And as the solar panel was being commanded to extend, it began to rip apart and, and in that condition, it was really, really unsafe for the space shuttle, even non the concern was that if we were to undo the space shuttle, the entire solar panel could rip apart and hit the the space station or the space shuttle causing considerable damage, maybe making it unsafe for us to even come home.

Scott Parazynski (11:13): So we had to think very quickly whether to figure out a way to repair the solar panel, or we’d have to go out on a space walk and throw away a billion dollar national asset, and so brilliant engineers and mission control Houston and, and elsewhere around the country over the course of three days, came up with this brilliant plan using a cobble together robotic arm and a space walker out at the very tip of this thing to, to go essentially sew the solar panel back together. And what was a little bit harrowing is that you couldn’t really turn off the solar panel, even in over little night when the, the space station is in shadow, it’s still generating lots and lots of electricity. So we had to develop procedures that would keep the space walker myself safe to prevent any electricity coming into my, my space suit causing a fire or an explosion.

Scott Parazynski (12:17): So you know, Houston was able to do that the crew and I were able to go conduct this space walk and very proud to say that this repair is now a board, the international space station at will serve it till it’s orbited you know, perhaps 10 years or more in the future. So it was really one of those Apollo 13 sorts of efforts where you can’t go to the local hardware store and get a solar array repair kit. You have to build it with the things that you have around you. And, and that’s what I like to, you know, reflect on is, is when times getting really challenging, you know, what tools do you have? You know, what, what ideas what people can you bring in to solve the inevitable challenges that we all face, whether it’s in our business lives, in our professional lives you have to be resilient and resourceful.

Maria Franzoni (13:12): Such a good parallel to business to be able to find what have you already got without having to try and find something else without, you know, spending on other resources. But what have you got internally, who are the people who can help you? What are the things that you can do? That’s incredible. I sounds terrifying that story absolutely terrifying. And I’m, I’m really disappointed to say, to hear that you were talking about cosmic junk it, how, how big a problem is cosmic junk. You know,

Scott Parazynski (13:35): It’s an extraordinary problem right now, and it’s only going to get worse within the next you know, few years, we’re going to have 120,000 new launches of, of satellites, microsatellites Pico satellites every launch that goes up generates debris, whether it’s the, the the fair of the rockets, or just flex of paint that have come off at, and they’re traveling at, you know, tens of thousands of miles an hour, traveling in these different intersecting orbits. If you happen to have an expensive satellite there, or if you have happen to be an astronaut in a space walking suit out in the environments of this things will just, you know, slice right through whatever they come in contact with. So this is a huge problem, but our, our entire industrial base, our entire society really is, is so dependent upon these assets and space more and more. So, you know, the, the ubiquity of our access to the web you know, information commerce depend on satellite communications. And, and as we get more and more crowded there, you know, traffic control, if you will, is, is going to be a real problem.

Maria Franzoni (14:51): Wow. It seems that everywhere we go, whatever we do, we seem to pollute everything. Don’t we, with our, with our mess, with our debris, let’s not focus on that. But what would you like the space program to achieve in the future the next 10 years and beyond what are you hoping to, to come?

Scott Parazynski (15:08): I’m so sorry that for the, the, the beeps on my, my computer here, but yeah, so the, these are really extraordinary times that we live in, when we think about Virgin galactic and blue origin in the last couple of months now launching the first tourist astronauts into suborbital space with SpaceX repeatedly, delivering people and payloads to the international space station testing rockets that will one day go to the moon and, and onto Mars, we are really in a new Renaissance of, of space exploration. So I, I see a whole new generation of young people, engineers, scientists medical specialists, whole economies moving to the moon and ultimately to, to colonize Mars. And so what I hope is that we’ll benefit from our lessons learned here on earth will benefit from the brilliant minds that will create these, these environments and will take, will be better stewards of the moon and better stewards of what I, I call earth 2.0. But when we do colonize Mars, I hope that we, we take our best practices and, and our better stewards of these other environments that will, we’ll go inhabit. But we really are at a time when humanity is going to, you know, set foot and actually colonize other worlds.

Maria Franzoni (16:39): Wow. We’re gonna become Martians. That’s incredible. Isn’t it? Yeah. So how far ahead do you think that is? Is it, how is it, is it in my lifetime? I won’t tell you how old I am.

Scott Parazynski (16:49): Well, we’re probably about the same, but I, I believe that we’ll be on the moon to stay a akin to what we have at the south pole station. You know, it’s a, it’s a remote outpost that needs to resupply. But we’ll be there within the next five or six years NASA has on its books that will return to the moon by 2024. I don’t quite believe them. But I do think that shortly thereafter you know, five to six years from now, we’ll be sending crews repeatedly to the moon, ultimately to create an habitat on the south pole of, of our closest celestial neighbor and be able to extract water ice that will allow us to, to generate oxygen, to breathe, to grow hydroponic you know, crops there, in that environment and sustain life and use that as a launching pad then to take us ultimately to Mars, which is something that I know Elon Musk has a desire to do. In fact, he stated that he wants to die on Mars, which I think is, is a real commitment.

Maria Franzoni (17:55): Wow. Goodness gracious. Okay. I don’t wanna die on Mars. I’m not, I don’t wanna die on the planet here, but That’s fascinating about you is that you, you are a bit of an inventor and you’ve invented several I, I, I, I don’t know very much about them actually, but it’s been a it’s about performance is it, is, is those kind of things.

Scott Parazynski (18:20): I, I have a number of patents and, and more importantly, I’m, I’m working to commercialize all of them. So you, the, the hardest part I, I found in innovation is not the, the brilliant idea of creating an invention, but it’s the pathway to actually get it into the hands of customers and to have it change the lives of other people. And so that’s as an entrepreneur, that’s what I’m actively involved with. But I have a company called fluidity tech technologies. That’s involved in human machine interfaces for everything that moves in three dimensions, whether it’s a drone an electric, vertical takeoff, and land aircraft, like a, like a, a flying car to things further field like you know, surgical robotics to be able to precisely in an intuitively movement asset almost as subconscious act. So that’s, that’s one area of my innovation.

Scott Parazynski (19:17): I have other medical devices that I’ve, I’ve worked on and, and even, you know, consumer types of products that I’ve developed. And I, what I like to talk about in, in terms of corporate audiences in particular, is creating an environment that’s really conducive to innovation and, and that rewards and celebrates innovation and developing a framework where you can be very successful in doing this. One of my more interesting jobs before it I became a tech CEO was actually as a, a chief technology officer at a, at a medical institution. And what we did is we created these multidisciplinary teams that brought together people that were rarely asked, you know, what’s your opinion, how can we make things better for our patients? So I, I brought together the nurses and I brought together the, the respiratory technicians and the, the janitor staff, as well as the physicians and, and other people that were in the patient care flow, but brought everyone together in a room.

Scott Parazynski (20:27): What’s working well for you. What’s, what’s a hassle what’s costing too much money you know, causing the most pain for your patients. Where can we make life better for our patients overall, and what we found is oftentimes the, the best ideas came from the people that were never asked their opinion, but the nurse who with duct tape and and you know, a piece of chewing gum came up with a, you know, some cobbled together gizmo that actually, you know, saved saved a lot of time reduced pain. What, what have you? And so I’ve, I’ve reproduced this sort of framework in, in the later stages of my life pulling together multidisciplinary teams to solve difficult problems.

Maria Franzoni (21:21): And I mean, that’s a wonderful example. And again, it’s an example that relates so brilliantly to business because often sort of the innovation or the creative sort of it’s in a department, isn’t it tucked away as, as opposed to having everybody being responsible and involved. And I can see that those examples are, are brilliant. And of course, the example that you had with your EVA of people, you know, all coming together to try and solve a, a big problem. I think people tend to be more innovative when they’re pushed in the corner, and they have to solve it. It’s a it’s. How do you get into that mindset that you should always be innovative? Can you, can you get into that mindset and that way of being?

Scott Parazynski (21:56): Absolutely. And in fact, you know, as I often tell, you know, corporate events it, we have both a, an opportunity and an obligation to innovate you know, we’re in this environment yeah, myself and healthcare. If, if we didn’t always ask the question, how can we do things better? We’d still be, you know, doing blood, letting for everything that ed us, you know, just in a very primitive state of, of affairs. And so we, we have to continue to you know, always ask the question, you know, how can we do this better, faster, cheaper, you know, whatever the parameters of a, of a business unit happen to be. I feel very fortunate in that I’ve been thrust into extreme environments, which I, I find to be extraordinary catalyst for innovation. When you send an astronaut into space a to you know, the top of a mountain, the diver deep in the ocean, these are places where humans really weren’t meant to be naturally, but you can send them there.

Scott Parazynski (23:00): If you think very carefully, how can we do this safely? You know, what can we do to enhance human performance extract more science and engineering data. When you answer those types of questions, inevitably you come back with wonderful technologies that benefit us here at sea level. You know, when I walk into an emergency department or an operating room, I see technologies that have their pedigree in the space program. When you, you walk into a, a military unit the protective gear and, and so on that, that they use also as its pedigree in the space program and, and vice versa, you know, we’re, we’re trying to protect human life. But then we can use those things in, in other facets of our our society.

Maria Franzoni (23:53): Okay. So you talked about extreme environments and you talked about where people are not meant to be, you have a tendency to wanna go where people are not meant to be. Tell me about this descent into a volcano. I mean, seriously, why would you want to descend into a volcano Scott?

Scott Parazynski (24:10): Well, other than it’s an extraordinary place, they’re, they’re anywhere between seven and 10 lava lakes on, on planet earth at any one time. They’re very rare. I was very fortunate to be asked to join an expedition sponsored by GE a few years ago to Messiah volcano the youngest lava lake on the, on the planet. And it’s an extraordinary place. It, it takes a lot of technology to, to get anywhere near it, although it’s only a 10 minute drive from the capital city of Managua where 2 million people live. So what, what is the driver first? Well, there are 800 million people around the world that live in close proximity to volcanoes, and they have no idea whether the volcano that’s in their backyard is going to erupt. And so what we wanted to do is very carefully as best we could implant a sensor array in and around the volcano, such that we could extract a lot of data and then use big data analytics to establish a predictive model of eruptive activity.

Scott Parazynski (25:14): So if we knew that if there was a certain blip in a certain data set immediately prior to interruption, we could then, you know, let the, the residents of Managua know that it’s time to evacuate something big is about to happen. So what we did is we set up a really novel essentially a zip line, but it was a steel braid cable from the, the crater rim down to the the crater floor. It was about 1200 meters of descent. And then repeatedly sent teams and equipment down to stage first at what we called level one, and then ultimately myself and the expedition leader, Sam Costman made the first descent first blueprints down to the the bottom of this crater. And it was one of the most extraordinary things that I’ve ever seen.

Scott Parazynski (26:09): I stood essentially 30 feet away from molten rock. It was waves crashing on a, a beach of, of black lava. And I, I can’t, can’t even imagine, you know, a, a brighter light. It was, it was like looking into the, into the sun, but of course it was looking into the, essentially the center of our, our earth, the magma just frothing and, and steaming with lava bombs going up and over the, the horizon. But we were in a, a relatively safe spot to then, you know, take some measurements and, and thankfully get out of there before anything happened to us.

Maria Franzoni (26:55): You know, I think you must have a very brave insurance company with what you do, Scott.

Maria Franzoni (27:02): I can imagine you’ve filling out the hall, so yeah. Oh yes. That’s what I’m doing in the volcano and space and no

Scott Parazynski (27:06): One’s ever come up, they don’t ask those questions, thankfully. So

Maria Franzoni (27:10): Let’s hope no one’s listening that could tell them and tip them off. So we talked about the great lessons that you can with all of the stories that you have, that you can illustrate all the experiences. So we talked about a little bit about teamwork. You talked about innovation. I can imagine that there are other topics that work well. I, I imagine risk management leadership. Yeah. So,

Scott Parazynski (27:33): Yes. So leadership under adversity situational situationally appropriate leadership is, is what we would kind of describe of our, our operations aboard the space shuttle as an example there are, you know, assigned roles and responsibilities. There’s the ships commander who’s ultimate responsibility is the safe completion of a mission. There’s the flight director and mission control. Who’s the ultimate authority, but it may be the rookie astronaut who is not jaded is a strong word, but, you know, indoctrinated to the the system who makes an observation, that’s just brilliant that that saves the day. And so you know, creating an environment where if someone has the situational awareness, the, the insight to taking the time to listen to everyone, and most, most decisions don’t need to be made as a snap decision there’s time. So when you can take the time to listen to discuss oftentimes you end up with the, you know, by far the, the best results.

Scott Parazynski (28:40): So using different styles of leadership, especially when facing university is something that I love to talk about. And then risk management is as well is, is certainly a topic that’s near and dear to myself as an astronaut, as a physician as an Explorer, I’m not a, a risk taker or a Daredevil, as you might imagine, just by listing the places that I’ve been, but I’m actually very carefully analyzing the environment training, relentlessly, understanding the risks that are out there, and then mitigating those risks before I ever set foot into the environment. So there are many things that you can do, whether it’s you know, heading for the summit of Mount Everest as I’ve done. Yes, it’s a dangerous environment, but if, if you are physically, mentally, technically trained you know, that the weather forecast for the next five days is going to be excellent. Your teammates are in great shape. You’re well rested. You’re well fed you’re well hydrated. The roots in good shape. You can, you can make that sortie and head towards the summit with a reasonable degree of safety. If you let any of your, any of your guard down, whoever things can turn a very quickly. And I, and I’ve seen that as well.

Maria Franzoni (30:04): Absolutely. Absolutely. So all of those great topics with your wonderful stories, illustrations and images, I think it’s a, certainly a, a content that clients will never forget. What’s next for you, Scott? What’s the next big challenge?

Scott Parazynski (30:18): Well, I, I believe I’m living, you know, the dream the American dream here. I, I, I imagine it’s the the European dream as well, which is, you know, to be an entrepreneur, an innovator. And so I’m, I’m growing a couple of companies right now, which is, is very exciting and it’s in many ways, a parallel to the, the challenges of, of you know, scaling a mountain or, or heading off into space. And so I’m, I’m, you know, working really diligently, relentlessly towards, you know, growing my, my company. And and so that’s, that’s an all consuming task and I, it’s interesting people ask me all the time, what’s the toughest thing you’ve ever done. That epic space walk you did, or scaling Mount Everest after rupturing a disc in your back on the mountain the year before I didn’t summit.

Scott Parazynski (31:16): The first time I went to Everest and I tell ’em neither, the toughest thing I’ve ever done is starting a company. And, and it, it really is a, a wonderful journey. You know, the, the fact that you need to just like preparing for space flight have to wear so many different hats, and you have to overcome so many hurdles, but if you’re tenacious if you build the right team, if you, you stay true to your mission you can achieve great success. So that, that’s what I’m involved in, you know, professionally right now, there are other things that, as an Explorer I continue to do I recently returned from the wreck of the RMS Titanic actually. I took a submersible dive it’s about 12,600 feet below ocean surface just off the coast of Newfoundland and Canada. And so I’m a submersible pilot in training. And so I’ve been enjoying some explorations closer to home more recently.

Maria Franzoni (32:21): Fantastic. That’s wonderful. And is there a final thought you’d like to leave our listeners with, with regards to leadership team building risk management and in, or innovation, a, any of those that you’d like us to, to think about for the coming years that we should be focusing on?

Scott Parazynski (32:38): I, I think these are extraordinary times to be alive. Obviously there are many facets of you know, the news and the media that can get us down. You know, when we, we think about, you know, the pandemic that we’ve mostly gotten through, we’re, we’re not, we’re not done with it yet. Unfortunately, at least in this country tree. Obviously the, the news from Afghanistan is, is sobering. But I, I do think that we have this wonderful opportunity given the our abilities to communicate, to collaborate to, to leverage the, the inventions, the technologies that we’ve already come up with. How can we work together to solve some of the, the greatest problems that we face? You know, climate change is a solvable problem. Ocean pollution is a solvable problem. Hunger water security, all of these things can be solved by brilliant minds. And there are plenty of them. We just need to work together in, and so I’m a, an optimist. I, I think that by working with, with the right teams and, and being resilient, we can do extraordinary things in the years ahead. So I, I would leave everyone with a very optimistic view of the future. And I, I would love to, to to speak with your audiences in the future.

Maria Franzoni (34:08): Fantastic. What a wonderful message to leave everybody on Scott. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you’ve enjoyed yourself.

Scott Parazynski (34:15): Absolutely wonderful to be with you.

Maria Franzoni (34:17): Fantastic. Another frontier for you. You’ve now been on The Speaker Show too, so thank you everybody for listening to The Speaker Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating on apple podcasts, and you can keep up with future episodes on the speakers associates website, which is speakersassociates.com or your favorite podcast app. And if you would like to invite Scott to speak at your next conference or event, please contact Speakers Associates in plenty of time to book him, because he might be somewhere strange doing some crazy adventure. You won’t be disappointed. Thank you. See you next week.

In this episode of The Speaker Show, Maria Franzoni interviews Scott Parazynski, a decorated physician, astronaut, best-selling author and tech CEO.

Having trained at Stanford and Harvard, he has conducted ground-breaking research in space physiology and high-altitude acclimatisation. He is the only person to have both flown in space and summited Mt. Everest, is a submersible-pilot-in-training, and recently made the first descent into the Masaya Volcano in Nicaragua.

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Maria Franzoni is an established and recognised speaking industry expert and one of the most experienced speaker bookers in Europe.

As well as working with speakers, Maria also hosts live shows and podcasts. She currently hosts The Speaker Show podcast for Speakers Associates.

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