Rebecca D. Costa is an American sociobiologist and futurist. She is the preeminent global expert on the subject of “fast adaptation” and recipient of the prestigious Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Award. Her career spans four decades of working with founders, executives and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley. Costa’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, The Guardian, and otherleading publications. She presently serves on the Advisory Committee for the Lifeboat Foundation along with futurist Ray Kurzweil and Nobel Laureates Daniel Kahneman, Eric S. Maskin, Richard J. Roberts and Wole Soyinka.
Costa was the founder and CEO of one of the largest technology marketing firms in California, where she developed an extensive track record of launching game-changing technologies. Her clients included industry innovators such as Hewlett-Packard, Apple Computer, Oracle, Siebel Systems, General Electric, 3M and others. She has been on the forefront of technological and scientifc innovation, assisting venture capitalists and businesses to identify, fund and launch disruptive new trends.
Retiring at the zenith of her career in Silicon Valley, Costa spent six years researching and writing the international bestseller The Watchman’s Rattle: A Radical New Theory of Collapse. Her follow-on book, On the Verge, was introduced in 2017 to critical acclaim, shooting to the top of Amazon’s #1 New Business Releases. The success of The Watchman’s Rattle led to a popular weekly news program called The Costa Report which was syndicated throughout the United States by Genesis Communications Network through 2018.
Owing to global pressures to respond more rapidly and efficiently to the accelerating pace of change, Costa is a popular international speaker. She brings both an evolutionary biologist and technologist’s perspective to the subject of adaptation.
A global thinker in the mold of Alvin Tofer, Jared Diamond, Ray Kurzweil and Thomas Friedman, Costa attributes her ability to see the “big picture” to her cross-cultural education and upbringing. Raised in Tokyo, Japan, and Vientiane, Laos, during the Vietnam conflict, Costa brings a unique perspective to the everyday challenges of work and life.
Rebecca Costa is an alumnus of the University of California at Santa Barbara and currently resides in Astoria, Oregon.
