About the Author
(based on bio from the author's web site www.gregmortenson.com) Both photos below are courtesy Greg Mortenson, Central Asia Institute.
Greg Mortenson is the co-author of Three Cups of
Tea. He is also the co-founder of the nonprofit Central Asia Institute Pennies For
Peace. Three Cups of Tea has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 82 weeks
since its January 2007 release, and was Time Magazine Asia Book of The Year.
Minnesota-born Mortenson grew up on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro,
Tanzania (1958 to 1973). His father Dempsey, co-founded Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center, a teaching hospital, and his mother, Jerene, founded the International
School Moshi.
He served in the U.S. Army in Germany in the late 1970s where he received
the Army Commendation Medal. He later graduated from the University of South Dakota and pursued graduate studies in neurophysiology.
In 1992, Mortenson's younger sister, Christa, died from a massive seizure after a
lifelong struggle with epilepsy. The following year, to honor his sister's memory, Mortenson climbed Pakistan's K2, the world's second
highest mountain in the Karakoram range.
While recovering from his climb in the local village Korphe, Mortenson met a group of children
sitting in the dirt writing with sticks in the sand, and made a promise to help them build a school.
From that rash promise, grew a remarkable humanitarian campaign, in which Mortenson has
dedicated his life to promote education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and
Afghanistan.
As of 2008, Mortenson has established over 78 schools in rural and often volatile regions of
Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide education to over 28,000 children, including 18,000
girls, where few education opportunities existed before.
His work has not been without difficulty. In 1996, he survived an eight day armed kidnapping in
the Northwest Frontier Province NWFP tribal areas of Pakistan, escaped a 2003 firefight with
feuding Afghan warlords by hiding for eight hours under putrid animal hides in a truck going to
a leather-tanning factory. He has overcome two fatwehs from enraged Islamic mullahs, endured
CIA investigations, and also received hate mail and death threats from fellow Americans after
9/11, for helping Muslim children with education.
Mortenson is a living hero to rural communities of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where he has
gained the trust of Islamic leaders, military commanders, government officials and tribal chiefs
from his tireless effort to champion education, especially for girls.
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