Conor Grennan

Conor Grennan is the founder of Next Generation Nepal (NGN), a nonprofit organization dedicated to reconnecting trafficked children with their families in post-war Nepal, and the author of the memoir Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal (William Morrow). Since NGN's inception, Grennan has made several return trips to Nepal and helped reconnect more than 300 children with their families. Grennan's book and his presentations recount, in dramatic and often humorous detail, how a three-month volunteer gig at the Little Princes Children's Home in a small Nepalese village transformed into a personal mission to reconnecting trafficked children with their families. An engaging and energetic keynote speaker, Grennan has spoken at the Grand Opening Conference for West Point Center for the Rule of Law and given convocation and commencement speeches for New York University's Stern School of Business. He is a perfect speaker for colleges and universities (especially First Year Experience common reading programs), child rights groups, community one-book programs, and public and private high schools.

In 2004, when Grennan was about to turn 30, he planned a year-long trip around the world, which was to begin with a brief stint volunteering in the Little Princes Orphanage in war-torn Nepal. What was supposed to be just a three-month experience changed Grennan's life, and the lives of countless others.

While playing on the roof of the orphanage one day, Grennan was approached by a woman who would turn out to be the mother of two of the wards. Over hours of conversations with her, Grennan learned the truth about the kids he'd come to love. Many of the little princes were not orphans but rather had been taken from their homes and families by child traffickers. In addition to losing two of her boys, this woman, while under the control of a human trafficker, was doing her best to keep seven other terrified kids alive in her mud hut. Grennan's life changed in those moments, as he decided to commit himself to these kids, regularly traveling three hours by bus to take them food. After securing spots in an orphanage for all seven and arranging for an excellent local staff to run the Little Princes orphanage, Grennan escaped Nepal, one day before revolution erupted in Kathmandu, with the King's police shooting protestors in the streets.

After arriving home, Grennan received a devastating email reporting that the seven kids had disappeared, snatched once again by the same trafficker. Soon he was back in Kathmandu, riding through the chaotic streets on the back of a local's motorcycle, searching for his kids, seven needles in a corrupt haystack. And that is where Grennan's story begins.

Grennan pledged to not only start a new orphanage for these seven but to start an entirely new program dedicated to reuniting kids with their lost families in remote villages in the Nepalese hills, a four-day walk at best through war-torn precincts with no roads. He lived under constant fear of retribution from the traffickers, confronted drunken Maoist soldiers in the dark of night, and walked for four weeks on an injured leg with little and sometimes no food, waiting to be rescued by a World Food Organization helicopter that never arrived. He made a four-day walk in two days -- moving through the dangerous night -- to catch a flight from a remote spot before the snows of December arrived. He needed to return by December 22nd, both because that was the agreed-upon panic date on which friends would alert authorities if he didn't return, and because it was the date that the woman he'd fallen in love with over email would arrive at his door so they could, at long last, meet in person. Since that first fateful trip, Grennan's team has reconnected almost 300 families with children they feared were lost to them forever.

Grennan spent eight years at the EastWest Institute (EWI), both in Prague and the EU Office in Brussels. During that time, he developed and managed a wide variety of projects focusing on issues such as peace and reconciliation in the Balkans, community development in Central Eastern Europe, and harmonizing anti-trafficking policy at the highest levels of government in the European Union and the former Yugoslavia in cooperation with the top experts in the field. In 2001 he was made Deputy Director of EWI's Program on Security and Good Governance, and served as the Advisor on EU Affairs to EWI's Worldwide Security Program.

Grennan is a citizen of the U.S. and Ireland and was based in Kathmandu, Nepal, until October 2007. He is now on the Board of Directors of NGN. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the NYU Stern School of Business, where he served as president of the student body. Currently he resides in Connecticut with his wife and two children.

• Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal

• Finding a Vocation After College: How International Travel and Global Volunteerism Give You An Edge in the Job Hunt

• Just Show Up: Volunteering to Change Your Life and the Lives of Others—One Person at a Time

• Rediscovering Christianity and Your Calling

• Child Trafficking and International Adoption