As the longest-serving president of World Vision U.S., Rich Stearns calls Christians to action on the greatest needs of our day. His award-winning, best-selling book, The Hole in Our Gospel, has encouraged hundreds of thousands of readers to open their hearts to those who are hurting in our world. Over the past two decades he has logged 2 million air miles traveling to 65 countries to better understand the issues faced by the world’s poorest people.

Driven by his passion to raise awareness and support for poverty and justice issues, Rich appears regularly as a commentator in outlets ranging from Christianity Today and Relevant Magazine to Fox News and HuffPost. He regularly speaks in churches across the U.S., and in recent years has spoken at the Lausanne Conference, Willow Creek’s Global Leadership Summit, the Christian Leadership Alliance, Q Conference, Movement Day, the Worship Together Conference, and dozens of other gatherings.

A former CEO of Parker Brothers Games and Lenox, Rich holds a Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Following the calling he felt from God, he resigned from Lenox in 1998 to lead World Vision U.S., after more than 20 years in corporate America.

In this position he has built a strong leadership team focused on bringing corporate best practices to the nonprofit sector and inspiring a culture of outcome-focused management at all levels of the organization. Rich’s greatest legacy will be calling the church in America to respond to some of the greatest needs of our time, most notably the HIV and AIDS pandemic and, more recently, the global refugee crisis.

Rich and his wife, Reneé, live in Bellevue, Washington, and have supported World Vision since 1984. They have five children and five grandchildren of their own, and consider millions more around the world to be part of their family. (Download Rich’s bio.)