How to Make a Difference by Nicholas Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn

Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times since 2001, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who writes op-ed columns that appear twice a week.

Mr. Kristof grew up on a sheep and cherry farm near Yamhill, Oregon. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and then studied law at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, graduating with first class honors. He later studied Arabic in Cairo and Chinese in Taipei. Mr. Kristof has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to more than 150 countries, plus all 50 states, every Chinese province and every main Japanese island. During his travels, he has had unpleasant experiences with malaria, mobs and an African airplane crash.

After joining The New York Times in 1984, initially covering economics, he served as a Times correspondent in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo. He also covered presidential politics and is the author of the chapter on President George W. Bush in the reference book "The Presidents." He later was Associate Managing Editor of the Times for Sunday editions.

In 1990 Mr. Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, then also a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement. They were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer for journalism. Mr. Kristof won a second Pulitzer in 2006, for commentary for what the judges called "his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world." He has also won other prizes including the George Polk Award, the Overseas Press Club award, the Michael Kelly award, the Online News Association award and the American Society of Newspaper Editors award. Mr. Kristof was the first blogger on The New York Times Web site and the first to contribute a video to The Times site. He has more Twitter followers than any other print reporter worldwide, and he also has large followings on Facebook and Google+ as well as a channel on YouTube. A documentary about him, "Reporter," executive produced by Ben Affleck, aired on HBO in 2010.

In his column, Mr. Kristof was an early opponent of the Iraq war, and among the first to warn that we were losing ground to the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. He was among the first to raise doubts about WMD in Iraq. His columns have often focused on global health and poverty and he has also written often about human trafficking.

Mr. Kristof and Ms. WuDunn are authors of the best-selling books “A Path Appears,” “Half the Sky,” “Thunder from the East,” and "China Wakes.” Mr. Kristof is a member of the boards of Harvard University and The American Association of Rhodes Scholars. He and Ms. WuDunn are the parents of Gregory, Geoffrey and Caroline. Mr. Kristof enjoys running, backpacking, and having his Chinese and Japanese corrected by his children.

Sheryl WuDunn, the first Asian-American reporter to win a Pulitzer Prize, is currently a senior managing director at Mid-Market Securities, a small banking boutique helping growth companies. She is also co-founder of FullSky Capital, where she advises socially driven for-profit ventures, along with ventures in education, healthcare, new media technology, among other fields.

Previously, WuDunn has been vice president in the investment management division at Goldman, Sachs & Co. and has worked at The New York Times both as a journalist and an executive. She was a project director in The Times’s Strategic Planning Department, and she ran a department in circulation for readers under 30. She was a foreign correspondent based in China for The Times and is co-author with her husband, Nicholas D. Kristof, of A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity (Knopf, September 2014), Half the Sky, China Wakes and Thunder from the East.

Ms. WuDunn also helped develop a multi-platform digital project for Half the Sky and helped raise $8 million for the multi-platform endeavor, which included a PBS Documentary (Fall 2012) that reached millions of viewers, a Facebook game (Spring 2013) that reached #9 in its first two weeks, mobile games and educational videos. In 2012, WuDunn was selected as one of 60 notable members of the League of Extraordinary Women by Fast Company magazine. In 2013, she was included as one of the “leading women who make America” in the PBS documentary, “The Makers.” She was also featured in a 2013 Harvard Business School film about prominent women who graduated from HBS.

Ms. WuDunn has an M.B.A. from Harvard, an M.P.A. from Princeton University and a B.A. from Cornell University. She is currently on the Board of Trustees at Princeton, and is a former Board Trustee at Cornell.