Greg Mortenson

Greg Mortenson 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 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 and Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mortenson was accused of financial irregularities in handling donations to the CAI and falsehoods in his books.

His parents, Irvin and Jerene, went with the Lutheran Church to Tanganyika (now Tanzania) in 1958 to be teachers at a girls' school in the Usambara mountains.

In 1961, Irvin 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.

From 1973 to 1975, he attended Ramsey High School in Roseville, Minnesota, from which he graduated.

After high school, Mortenson served in the U.S. Army in Germany from 1975 to 1977 and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal.

Following his discharge, he attended Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, from 1977 to 1979 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.

Mortenson describes the origins of his humanitarian work in his best-selling book Three Cups of Tea.

He states he traveled to northern Pakistan in 1993 to climb the world's second-highest mountain, K2, as a memorial to his sister, Christa.

After more than 70 days on the mountain, located in the Karakoram range, Mortenson failed to reach the summit.

Earlier, Mortenson and fellow climber Scott Darsney were also involved in a 75-hour life-saving rescue of another climber, Etienne Fine, which put them in a weakened state.

After the rescue, he descended the mountain and set out with a local Balti porter, Mouzafer Ali, to the nearest city.

According to the account in Three Cups of Tea, Mortenson stated he took a wrong turn on the trail and ended up in the small village of Korphe.

Physically exhausted, ill, and alone at the time of his arrival there, Mortenson was cared for by some of Korphe's residents while he recovered.

As a gesture of gratitude to the community for their assistance to him, Mortenson said he would build a school for the village after he noticed local students attending school in an outdoor location and writing out their lessons in the dirt.

Three Cups of Tea describes his travels in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, including his escape from a 2003 firefight between Afghan opium warlords, his subjection to two fatwās by conservative Islamist clerics for educating girls, and his receiving hate mail and threats from fellow Americans for helping educate Muslim children.

According to op-ed columnist and Mortenson friend Nicholas D. Kristof, the schools built by CAI have local support and have been able to avoid retribution by the Taliban and other groups opposed to girls' education because of community "buy-in", which involves getting villages to donate land, subsidized or free labor ("sweat equity"), wood and resources.

From 2006 through 2011, Greg Mortenson promoted his book as well as fundraising and promoting girls' education through public speaking events at schools throughout the United States.

In 2009, the total cost of his book promotion, fundraising, and awareness building for girls education paid for by CAI amounted to $4.6 million.

Travel expenses for his speaking engagements were paid for by the Central Asia Institute through the end of 2010.

Mortenson personally kept the money received in exchange for his service as a public speaker as well as royalties from the sale of his book.

Mortenson has since admitted in a 2011 interview that the timing in the Korphe account in Three Cups of Tea is inaccurate, and that the events actually took place long after his descent from K2, over a longer period of time and during separate trips.

Mortenson has written and spoken widely about the importance of education and literacy for girls worldwide.

He has further stated that girls' education is the most important investment all countries can make to create stability, bring socio-economic reform, decrease infant mortality and population explosion, and improve health, hygiene, and sanitation standards.

His view is that "fighting terrorism" perpetuates a cycle of violence whereas there should instead be a global priority to "promote peace" through education and literacy with an emphasis on educating girls.

In 2012, Mortenson repaid $1 million to the CAI after an inquiry by the Montana Attorney General.

The inquiry determined that he had improperly used over $6 million of the organization's funds; however, no criminal activity was discovered.

Mortenson was born in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

In April 2012, after a year-long investigation by the Montana attorney general, Mortenson agreed to repay $1 million to the CAI.

As of 2014, CAI reports it has established or significantly supported over 300 projects, including 191 schools, in rural and often volatile regions of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan.

After experiencing frustration in his efforts to raise money for the school, Mortenson persuaded Silicon Valley computer pioneer Jean Hoerni to fund the building of the Korphe school.

Hoerni, who was critically ill at the time, formed the Central Asia Institute so that he and others could make tax-exempt donations to support Mortenson's work, and Mortenson became its first executive director.

The mission of the non-profit organization is to promote education and literacy, especially for girls, in remote mountain regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.