GREG MORTENSON

Greg Mortenson is the co-founder of Central Asia Institute, a nonprofit that builds rural schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Pennies For Peace, which connects 2,700 American schools with struggling students abroad. He co-authored Time Magazine’s Asia Book of the Year, THREE CUPS OF TEA, which has remained on the New York Times Bestseller list for 91 weeks, with six months at the #1 spot.

A former night nurse and mountain climber who grew up in Tanzania and hiked Mt. Kilimanjaro at the age of eleven, Greg Mortenson is the only foreigner on Pakistan’s national education reform committee. In Islamabad this March, President Asif Ali Zardari will present Greg with Pakistan’s highest civil honor, the Sitara-e-Pakistan—the Star of Pakistan—in thanks for the fifteen years Greg has worked to promote education and literacy amongst Pakistani youth.

Greg’s dedication to Pakistan’s schools began accidentally. In 1993, after the death of a much-loved younger sister, Greg traveled to the Karakoram mountain range to climb K2, the world’s second highest mountain. He hoped to honor her memory by reaching the summit. Thwarted by storms and altitude sickness, he failed to take the mountain, and instead ended up recovering in Korphe, a local village. He encountered great generosity, as the locals fed and housed him, but also great deprivation—the children held “school” outdoors, writing their lessons out with sticks on the dirt they sat on. The literacy rate was 3% and one out of every three children died in their first year. Greg promised he’d return to Korphe to build a school.

Greg followed through with that promise, and the completion of the Korphe school marked the beginning of his lifelong dedication to education in the region, a dedication he comes to naturally as the son and grandson of teachers. As of 2008, Greg, along with the Central Asia Institute, has established over 78 schools and many women’s vocational centers in the rural and often volatile regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. CAI-built schools provide access to education for over 28,000 children, including 18,000 girls.

As the United States launched massive military campaigns to fight terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11, Greg, a veteran Army medic, became increasingly convinced that investing in education, especially of women, is key to overcoming extremism. “You can drop bombs,” he says, “hand out condoms, build roads, or put in electricity, but until the girls are educated a society won’t change.” And Greg has encountered his fair share of extremism. Despite strong partnerships with Islamic leaders, military commanders and tribal chiefs, Greg has met with opposition. He has survived two fatwehs from enraged mullahs objecting to the secular education of girls, escaped a firefight between feuding Afghan warlords, and lived through an eight day armed kidnapping by the Taliban. He has also endured two CIA investigations into his work and received myriad death threats and hate mail from fellow Americans who criticize his support of Muslim children. But he’s also witnessed first-hand, again and again, the ways in which education transforms society.

Greg spends half of every year in Pakistan and Afghanistan and much of the other half traveling the US, lecturing to packed auditoriums about promoting peace, prosperity, and empowerment through education. Greg has spoken at around sixty universities and over 400 elementary and secondary schools, not to mention at Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, churches, mosques, synagogues, civic groups, and conventions across America.

Tom Brokaw described Greg as “one ordinary person, with the right combination of character and determination, who is really changing the world.” Congresswoman Mary Bono (Rep – Cali.) says, "I've learned more from Greg Mortenson about the causes of terrorism than I did during all our briefings on Capitol Hill. He is a true hero, whose creativity, courage, and compassion exemplify the true ideals of the American spirit.”

Greg, 50, lives in Bozeman, Montana with his wife, Dr. Tara Bishop, a clinical psychologist, and their two children, Khyber and Amira.