Greg Mortenson
| Greg Mortenson | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
December 27, 1957 St. Cloud, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Residence | Bozeman, Montana, U.S. |
| Nationality | US |
| Alma mater | University of South Dakota |
| Occupation | Professional speaker, writer, veteran, and former mountaineer |
| Employer | Central Asia Institute |
| Spouse(s) | Dr. Tara Bishop |
| Parent(s) | Irvin and Dr. Jerene Mortenson |
Greg Mortenson (born December 27, 1957) is an American professional speaker, writer, veteran, 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 47 languages. Mortenson is also the author of Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mortsenson was born in 1957 in St. Cloud, Minnesota. His parents, Irvin and Jerene, went with the Lutheran Church to Tanganyika (now Tanzania) in 1958 to be teachers in at a girls' 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.
In the early 1970s, when he was 15 years old, Mortenson and his family left Tanzania and moved back to Minnesota. He attended Ramsey High School in Roseville, Minnesota, from 1973-75, where he graduated.
After high school, Mortenson served in the U.S. Army in Germany from 1975-77 and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal. Following his discharge, he attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, from 1977-79 on an athletic (football) scholarship.
In 1978, Concordia College's football team won the NAIA Division III national championship with a 7-0 win over Findlay, Ohio. Mortenson graduated from the University of South Dakota in 1983 with a bachelor's degree in liberal studies and an associate degree in nursing.
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