Marcus Shingles is the co-founder and CEO of Exponential Destiny, an educational non-profit based in the U.S. which focuses on upskilling youth in under-served and under-resourced communities as “Metaverse Entrepreneurs”, and then employing and redeploying these same youth to help transform schools in their communities using immersive and experiential educational pedagogies based on “edu-tainment” methods in VR. During the opening keynote in March of 2022 in Geneva at a UN ITU summit, Marcus and his team of youth leaders at Exponential Destiny announced the “Metaverse for SDGs Global Prize & VR Competition” with the support of the United Nations ITU agency.

Previously in his career, Marcus led innovation at Bain consulting and Deloitte consulting, and was recently the CEO of the XPRIZE Foundation. Currently Marcus is Chief Innovation Officer in a global development firm where he is responsible for the full design and development of “Smart Cities & Urban Innovation” in northern Thailand and Cambodia.  Marcus is on the board of the Virtual World Society, Stanford University’s “Disruptive Technology & Digital Cities” Program, and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network for “4th Industrial Revolution”.