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Chris Guillebeau is a writer, world traveler, social entrepreneur, and lifelong learner.
For the last ten years he has been self-employed, including four years as a volunteer aid worker in West Africa. During his time overseas, Chris worked with senior government leaders in eight African countries and served as the Programs Director for a medical non-governmental organization. Chris now lives in Seattle with his wife Jolie, an artist who has been to more than 35 countries of her own. In between traveling around the world, he enjoys long-distance running and visiting coffee shops throughout Seattle. Chris is 30 years old.
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That’s the official version. If you’re curious, you can read more details in my first-person travel biography below, or just follow the site as I post at least three updates a week for the next year. I hope to visit 25 countries in 2008, and I’ll write about each of them here. I also write about personal development and entrepreneurship.
In 2002, Jolie and I moved to Freetown, Sierra Leone, considered at the time by the U.N. Human Development Index as the poorest country in the world. Over the next two years, we worked in Togo, Ghana, Benin, and Liberia for stays of 4-6 months each.
I also traveled to Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Nigeria, and the Gambia to meet with government leaders on behalf of the organization I worked for. These experiences helped me appreciate the values of independent travel in places that most people never go. In Liberia I traveled to the country at least five times (I lost count), meeting with the senior U.N. leaders who were in charge of reconstruction and the interim chairman of the national government.
In my last month in Liberia, I gave a keynote speech to President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and members of her cabinet. I was also fortunate to meet Archbishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa, and other leaders working for positive change throughout the continent. Sadly, I also knew a lot of warlords and corrupt leaders who hinder the well-being of their citizens, but that’s a story for another day.
We spent a total of four years working in West Africa, and left because the hospital ship we were living on for most of that time was going out of service in 2006. In August of that year, we came to Seattle.
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Seattle, Washington (2006-2008)
In 2006 I moved to Seattle, where I began a graduate program in International Studies at the University of Washington. During breaks between quarters, I traveled as much as I could. In the first year, I visited Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Eastern Africa, and the Middle East. Riding on the ferry from Hong Kong to Macau, I first developed the vision of visiting every country in the world. Six months later, while flying back from Seoul on another trip, I stayed up all night on my Singapore Airlines flight, writing out the framework and initial content for this project.
In 2007, I took my first Round-the-World trip, which allowed me to go to Uganda, Tanzania, Malta, Japan, and five other countries. In 2008 I will take my second Round-the-World trip, which will be even more adventurous—I plan to visit Pakistan, Easter Island, and North Africa as part of the trip.
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