Dan Buettner

Dan Buettner
Buettner in October 2010
Born	1960 St. Paul, Minnesota
Occupation	explorer, educator

Dan Buettner (born June 18, 1960 in St. Paul, Minnesota) is a National Geographic Fellow and New York Times bestselling author. He is an explorer, educator, author, producer, storyteller and public speaker. He co-produced an Emmy Award-winning documentary and holds three Guinness records for endurance cycling. He is the founder of the Blue Zones and Blue Zones, LLC.

Buettner grew up in a family that spent lots of time in the outdoors, camping, hunting, gardening and bicycling. His parents took their four boys to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area every summer on weeklong canoe trips.

After graduating from the College of St. Thomas in 1984, Buettner took a year to explore Spain before taking a job with National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. recruiting celebrity participation in a fund-raising croquet tournament with journalist George Plimpton.

Buettner graduated from the University of St. Thomas in 1982. Soon thereafter he went to work for Washington Post columnist Remar Sutton and Paris Review Editor to organic the National Public Radio’s Celebrity Croquet Tournament. The three men formed a lifelong friendship. Buettner recalls, "George was heavily influenced by the notion that you can do what you love and make a living out of it. If you’re good at universalizing your experiences in an artful way, you can pretty much do what you want to do."

In 1986, Buettner and his brother Steve launched the first of several Guinness World Records for transcontinental cycling . "Americastrek". Traversed 15,536 miles from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. The 1990 "Sovietrek."followed the 45th parallel around the world, covered 12,888 miles. Buettner recounted the trip in his book Sovietrek, which won a Minnesota Book Award.. In 1992, the Buettner brothers teamed cycled from Bizerte, Tunisia, to Cape Agulhas, South Africa, "Africatrek." with cyclist Dr. Chip Thomas,. The team covered 11,885 over eight months. Buettner’s book, Africatrek: A Journey by Bicycle through Africa, won the Young Reader Award from Scientific American. Buettner also co-produced an Emmy Award-winning PBS documentary by the same name, that won an Emmy Award.