Nicholas Kristof

More than just a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof is an extraordinary thinker, human rights advocate, and astute chronicler of humanity. A seasoned journalist, he has traveled the major roads and minor byways of China, Africa, India, and South Asia, offering a compassionate glimpse into global health, poverty, and gender in the developing world.

Kristof has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to 140 countries, all 50 states, every Chinese province, and every main Japanese island. He's also one of the few Americans to visit every member of the "Axis of Evil." During his travels, he has had unpleasant experiences with malaria, wars, an Indonesian mob carrying heads on pikes, and an African airplane crash.

Haunted by the Darfur genocide, Kristof has gone beyond reporting. Often called the "reporter’s reporter," Kristof is also the subject of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival documentary Reporter. Crossing over into activism and hoping his dispatches will resonate with people, Kristof gives a voice to the voiceless. He believes, "you [can] tell the story of a place by writing about a tiny village as a sort of prism into the bigger issues the culture [is] facing."

Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer in journalism for their coverage of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement. They wrote China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power together and co-authored their latest book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. Addressing worldwide maltreatment, marginalization, and brutality towards women, Half the Sky draws a compelling picture of the trials and triumphs of women struggling for opportunity and equality. Called "electrifying" by The Washington Post, the book has already hit The New York Times Bestseller List.