Dylan Taylor is a global business leader and philanthropist. He is an active pioneer in the space exploration industry as a CEO, investor, thought leader and futurist. Every day is like Christmas for Dylan, because working in the space industry has always been his passion and calling. Beth asks Dylan about when his interest in space began, and Dylan describes how investments in space can be transformational for all humans and our future- on this episode of the Casual Space Podcast.   ABOUT DYLAN TAYLOR: Dylan Taylor is a global business leader and philanthropist. He is an active pioneer in the space exploration industry as a CEO, investor, thought leader and futurist. Currently, Dylan serves as Chairman & CEO of Voyager Space Holdings, a multi-national space holding firm that acquires and integrates leading space exploration enterprises globally. Dylan has been cited by Harvard University, SpaceNews, the BBC, Pitchbook, CNBC, CNN and others as having played a seminal role in the growth of the private space industry. As an early-stage investor in more than 50 emerging ventures, including Accion, Kepler, York, Astrobotic, Made in Space, Relativity, and Planet, Dylan is widely considered the most active private space investor in the world. Dylan has extensive global business experience as both a board director and CEO. He previously served as a Director for UMB Bank, a Fortune 500 company based in Kansas City and as a mutual fund director for the Jackson Funds where he oversaw assets of $8B across 130 distinct funds. Dylan has been a Fortune 1000 CEO with P&L responsibility in excess of $3B and operations encompassing 16,000 employees in 60 countries. In addition, Dylan has participated in 4 IPOs over the course of his career.   From the Casual Space Podcast: On how his love for space got started and why it’s getting stronger every day: “Every day is like Christmas, I certainly love what I do. For me, (space) is a life long passion, the question I ask myself a lot is, ‘Why did it take so long to realize what I loved and was truly passionate about?!’ I think the answer is, you get caught up in life, you get caught up in a career path… and ironically, if you have early success in your career that’s not directly tied to your passion, it can be a little bit of a trap. I think you can find yourself in the hamster wheel, and it can be hard to get off.. I certainly was like the situation I was in. I was in more of a traditional business career, and that was fine, and there were gratifying elements of that, but it was not truly satisfying the passion that I had for space.” “My passion for space is really about the societal impact of space. It’s about the transformational element of space. It’s about the ability for humanity to reimagine what it means to be human, and what our opportunity as a species is going forward. So to me, it’s more about having the canvas to paint our future onto. I think space is truly transformational from a contextual, intellectual standpoint.”   On what made Dylan Taylor brave enough to leave his career path to follow his passion for space:  “My close friends and family encouraging me- I could see that we were entering a growth for the industry, and I’ve never been personally happier being in the industry. My free time and social activity and my life revolves around it- it’s not a career, it’s more of a calling.”   On the challenges of space and why it’s worth exploring: “We have some real global challenges. Climate change, income inequality, mass migration caused by civil unrest, geopolitics, etc. My thesis is that the reason those problems seem intractable, is because we really don’t have the right context to evaluate those problems. We don’t really have the right view, that we’re all humans, on a rock floating in the middle of space, squabbling over (in my mind) tiny differences.  I’m all about space as a contextual reorientation that allows you to see things clearer, and in a more enlightened way. “The