LifeGuides awarded "Abundance Impact Challenge" Grand Prize from Peter Diamandis & Abundance 360 Leadership Mastermind

Press Releases

Jan 29, 2019

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 29, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Beverly Hilton, at the annual leadership summit, Abundance 360, which is a “Davos” for visionary leaders in exponential technologies, such as genomics, robotics and artificial intelligence, LifeGuides, a public benefit corporation, was awarded the “Abundance Impact Challenge” Grand Prize. The award competition was created by A360 and managed by HeroX, a platform to inspire breakthrough solutions to our greatest challenges. Peter Diamandis, the founder of XPrize, co-founder of Singularity University, and founder of A360, awarded the Grand Prize to Mark Donohue, Founder & CEO, and Derek Lundsten, Vice Chairman of the Board. The contest had hundreds of breakthrough technology innovations competing, yet ultimately, the Prize Committee chose a human-to-human solution, which is not a new technology, but a breakthrough use of existing technology. The contest rules favored immediately scalability ideas that can have exponential positive impact on humanity.

As Mark Donohue, CEO, explained: “Life Guides uses technology to facilitate empathetic, affordable, human-to-human connection, primarily through phone calls supported by texts and our proprietary Intelligence Assistance™ software. The company’s Mission Statement is: “Growing a Platform for Caring People to do Extraordinary Good.” In this respect, Life Guides pairs people who are going through a very specific Life Challenge, with Guides who have successfully completed the exact-same Life Challenge. Clients and Guides are connected through advanced matching algorithms, yet the Client personally picks their Guide. Like Match.com pairs people for love, and Doctors On Demand finds doctors for patients, LifeGuides matches a trained Guide with a client to reduce struggle related to a specific Life Challenge.

“LifeGuides has the goal of the reducing suffering for 1B people within 15-years. We will primarily scale through adoption by leading businesses, that choose to affordably reduce presenteeism loss, enhance employee retention, foster greater creativity and vitality and advance a ‘Culture of Caring.‘” As Mr. Donohue continued: “Life Experience is arguably the most valuable asset on the planet, yet we vastly under utilize it. Technology cannot replace our fundamental drive for human-to-human sharing of knowledge, empathy and connection, so LifeGuides creates well-matched and timely human connections in life’s most challenging moments, which are supported by a cutting-edge intelligent platform.”

Peter Diamandis stated: “LifeGuides is huge. We often hear about robots and artificial intelligence taking our jobs. But the fact of the matter is that, if I had an extraordinarily painful experience, I don’t care how humanlike a robot is, there’s something in your soul that it connects with others that say: ‘I went through this, I know how you feel.'”

Derek Lundsten, Vice Chairman, noted that: “The jobs created by LifeGuides are uniquely human, facilitated by technology to share invaluable human experience in life’s challenging moments. We provide our Guides with free expert training and we pay all Guides a ‘living wage,‘ so we intend to solve a portion of the potential future jobs crisis caused by the rise of robotics and AI.“

Einstein once said, “It is appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” Today, we believe that technology can radically accelerate global empathy, foster profound human connections, and enhance the best of humanity. The future is better than many people envision.

Links:
For Press inquiries or to learn more, please contact Dave McNeish: Dave@LifeGuides.com. Please visit: https://lifeguides.com

Headshot of Mark Donohue: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YXQ8e3g1NsLlKe0nU5EGZZKsgce4-rXE/view?usp=sharing

Video link celebrating the award:
https://vimeo.com/314066444

About Mark Donohue
Mark has specialized in “impact” enterprises, “conscious capitalism” and “triple bottom line” economics for 30 years. His passion is to bring regenerative, healing and sustainable models to much-greater scale in our world. He is an expert in sales, strategy, design, teaching, consumer products and finance.

He was Entrepreneur-in-Residence for over five years, and subsequently Senior Fellow in Social Innovation, at Babson College, which is consistently #1-rated in the world for Entrepreneurship education. In January of 2011, Mr. Donohue was honored as one of the “Top 100 American Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior,” by the organization Trust Across America.

Mark’s past roles have included: Chairman & Founder of a Silicon Valley $100M+ venture fund; Chairman & CEO of a 200-employee pharmaceuticals enterprise; President of a $100M revenue e-commerce company; CEO of a NASADAQ member Investment Bank, Professor of Entrepreneurship (adjunct) at Babson College, Technology Strategist for a $30B PE/VC fund group, and Board roles for a dozen businesses, including Chair of a 240-employee Internet-of-Things enterprise.

In the non-profit realm, he has served on Boards including: Babson College, the Social Venture Network, The Temple of Understanding (USA’s oldest interfaith education organization), and as Treasurer of the Foundation for Conscious Evolution.

About Peter Diamandis:
Diamandis is the Founder & Executive Chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, which leads the world in designing and operating large-scale incentive competitions. He is also the Executive Founder of Singularity University, a graduate-level Silicon Valley institution that counsels the world’s leaders on exponentially growing technologies.

As an entrepreneur, Diamandis has started over 20 companies in the areas of longevity, space, venture capital and education. He is also co-Founder BOLD Capital Partners, a venture fund with $250M investing in exponential technologies.

About Abundance 360 and Singularity University
Abundance360.com is a highly curated mastermind of 360 entrepreneurs, CEOs, and investors committed to understanding the impact of exponential technologies and transforming their success into significance. A360 is part of the Singularity family of enterprises.

Singularity University is a global learning and innovation community offering a variety educational programs using exponential technologies to tackle the world’s biggest challenges and build a better future for all. Our collaborative platform empowers individuals and organizations across the globe to learn, connect, and innovate breakthrough solutions using accelerating technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, and digital biology. The SU community includes entrepreneurs, corporations, global nonprofits, governments, investors, and academic institutions in more than 127 countries. With over 5,000 impact initiatives, our community is driving positive change in the areas of health, environment, security, education, energy, food, prosperity, water, space, disaster resilience, shelter, and governance.