Greg Mortenson

Greg Mortenson (born December 27, 1957) is an American humanitarian, professional speaker, writer, and former mountaineer. He is a co-founder and former executive director of the non-profit Central Asia Institute, from which he was forced to resign as executive director following an investigation by the Montana attorney general, and the founder of the educational charity Pennies for Peace.

Mortenson is the co-author of The New York Times Bestseller, Three Cups of Tea, which stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 220 weeks.Three Cups of Tea has been published in over 47 languages. Mortenson is also the author of Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mortenson has been criticized by writers such as Peter Hessler and Jon Krakauer for financial mismanagement of his charity, for "dodging accountability" and for writing a book Krakauer described as "riddled with lies".

Early life

Mortsenson was born in 1957 in St. Cloud, Minnesota. His father, Irvin "Dempsey" and mother, Jerene, went with the Lutheran Church to Tanganyika (now Tanzania) in 1958 to be teachers in at a girl's school in the Usambara mountains. In 1961, Dempsey became a fundraiser and development director for the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center, the first teaching hospital in Tanzania. Jerene was the founding principal of International School Moshi. Spending his early childhood and adolescence in Tanzania, Mortenson learned to speak fluent Swahili.