Anna Ly to the Bottom of the Sea!

In March 2015, I attended a lecture by Paul Bunje (Senior Director, Oceans @XPrize) who gave a great talk about the potential of ocean exploration and the importance of educating people about it. During his talk, one thing that shocked me was that no woman has ever done the dive to the deepest part of the sea.

I want to be the first.

My goal is to encourage other woman and girls that the impossible is possible and to act on their adventurous spirit, to explore their passion, and to take risks that have a global, educational impact. My trip is meant to encourage them to expand their view on life through out of the box experiences while encouraging the next person to do the same.

I believe the best way to share my experience with other woman and girls is by taking them with me to the bottom to the sea! I am crowdsourcing suggestions, dreams, ideas, experiments of what I could while down in the ocean. When you help me, Anna Ly, get to the bottom of the sea, I will also live stream the trip and use social media platforms to give play-by-play while carrying down the millions of other woman and girls’ voices down to the sea! I believe that showing others what they have never encountered themselves, it will flourish ideas and creativity while inspiring empathy and adventure.

A little about me? I'm a designer, strategist, runner, swimmer, cyclist, triathlon newbie, and outdoorsperson. I work for Sesame Workshop and live and breathe in New York. Growing up, I played sports, wandered through New Jersey, studied astrophysics in New Mexico, practiced meditation and mindfulness, went to Carnegie Mellon and Stanford University, worked at Apple, Intel, Merrill Lynch, and IBM. I'm passionate about education, new media and technologies, empathy, mindfulness, and women and girls education. 

Find out more about me and the sea here!

Help send me, Anna Ly, to the BOTTOM of the SEA!



THE PLAN!
I want to take the trip on April 18, 2016. My birthday. To get there, we will need to:

Pull together the dream team that include engineering, management and operations, advisers, researchers and scientists, and communications. [3 months]

Raise funding. [6 months]

Go through training & education including training on operating a submersible, diving, scientific experimentation, safety. [6 months] 

Carry out technology & engineering development  including outfitting and improving existing vehicles to take down there. [10 months]

Build up engineering and operations support for before, during and after. [Now till execution] 

Increase communications and public involvement through traditional communications and digital formats [Now and forever]

Execute! including send me down there, making sure I’m okay while down there, and bringing me back up [1 year]

FUNDING
Given that a recent dive to the Mariana Trench cost $10 Million. I am pushing to raise $8 Million that will be spread across the above tasks. Any additional funding will be donated to the NOAA and women and girls educational programs. 

$2 million - Vehicle use and operations
$2 million - New engineering and technology development
$2 million - Engineering and technology support 
$1.25 million - Research and education
$500K - Operations and communications 
$250K towards materials and overhead