Biography of Dan Buettner

His Quest Channel of online expeditions has enabled millions of students to help unravel the world's greatest mysteries. The Washington Post called his Quests "the most successful experiment in interactive education to date".

The story of Dan's "Quests" began in the mid-1990s when he fused his passion for exploration and education with the budding World Wide Web. After founding Earthtreks, Inc., in 1995, Dan sought a platform to use the Web to take children along on journeys of discovery. The company's first project, MayaQuest, enabled an online audience to direct a team of experts to help solve the ancient Maya collapse. Some 30,000 classrooms used the education project designed around the Quest.

Dan sold Earthtreks, Inc. to Classroom Connect (now owned by Harcourt Brace) in 1997 where he oversaw eight more interactive Quests. Along with his team of experts, he revisited the Maya collapse, followed Marco Polo's footsteps and investigated the fall of the Anasazi in North America.

Prior to starting Earthtreks, Dan has set three Guinness World Records in long distance cycling. Americastrek (1986-87) took a team of four Americans on a 15,500-mile ride from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. On Sovietrek (1990), two Russians, Dan and his brother Steve biked 12,888 miles around the world. Their circumnavigation and the unlikely collaboration of Soviet "communists" and suburban Americans led to appearances by Dan on Late Night with David Letterman, CNN Headline News and on NBC's Today Show. Dan's ensuing book, Sovietrek, won a Minnesota Book Award.

The racial tensions rising out of the Los Angeles riots in 1992 inspired Dan to organize Africatrek, a multiracial trans-Africa expedition that took place a year later. He recruited a four-member team of black and white cyclists to highlight the power of racial cooperation and setting goals. Their 12,172-mile ride across Africa took them across the Sahara, the equatorial Congo and to the continent? southern tip. In conjunction with the expedition, Dan initiated a program that sent 1,000 bicycles to Africa and an education program that reached over one million students.

Dan co-produced an Africatrek segment on National Geographic and an Emmy Award-winning PBS documentary. Mattel's Africatrek Trail CD-ROM - allowing players to relive the expedition - had sales of more than $2 million. Dan's book, Africatrek, won the Scientific American's "Young Reader Award".

His accomplishments led to television appearances and profiles in dozens of publications, among them USA Today, Washington Post, Sports Illustrated, National Geographic Adventure, TIME, Men's Health, Pravda and People magazine. As a writer and photographer, Dan's work has appeared in National Geographic World, LIFE, Sports Illustrated, Outside, Popular Mechanics and the Chicago Tribune.

Dan's expeditions have garnered support of many sponsors including Target Stores, 3M, Apple Computer, Compaq Computers, Life Touch Portraits, Sun Microsystems, Nike, and Rolex. He was the spokesman for Target Stores' Camp Target, a line of outdoor products. He has been accepted into the Explorer's Club.

In the past 10 years Dan has delivered more than 500 keynote speeches in diverse venues ranging from National Association of Social Studies to Apple Computers, from Stanford University to Target Stores. He delivered a recent keynote address along with Intel CEO Craig Barrett to 7,000 teachers at the National Education Computing Conference. And the National Association of Campus Activities Directors inducted Dan into its "Hall of Fame" for his 200 college appearances.

Dan serves on the Board of Directors for The Loft, a literary organization and The British Virgin Islands Parks National Trust (along with Peter Jennings, Walter Cronkite, Winthrop Rockefeller and Jean Michele Cousteau). He graduated cum laude from the University of St. Thomas in 1983. Dan resides in Minnesota, where he is currently writing a book and producing a television series based on his adventures.