Nick Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning op-ed columnist for the New York Times.

As a champion for education (among other great causes), he put his own to good use. Kristof graduated from Harvard in 3 years, landed in Phi Beta Kappa, and earned a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford. He then joined the the New York Times as a reporter; he became a columnist in 2003. In 1990, Kristoff won the Pulitzer Prize with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, for their coverage of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square (the first ever awarded to a married couple).

Kristof has used his op-ed perch to draw attention to humanitarian crises in ignored corners of the globe. He's been one of the loudest and most persistent voices advocating for U.S. intervention in the Darfur conflict (for which he won his second Pulitzer), and has spotlighted the scourge of international sex slavery (he actually bought the freedom of two Cambodian sex slaves in 2004). Since 2006, he has hosted the annual New York Times "Win a Trip" contest, in which he gives one worthy college student a chance to report alongside him in Africa.

His causes have garnered attention by the likes of George Clooney, Ben Affleck, and Mia Farrow, and is described by Entertainment Weekly as "a cross between Mother Teresa and the James Woods character in Salvador." Leave it to grating conservative TV host Bill O'Reilly (who's called Kristof a "left-wing ideologue" and "absolutely clueless"), however, to rain on his parade.

Kristof and WuDunn have three kids and live in Scarsdale, New York.

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