Rutger Bregman is Historian and Author of 2 best sellers translateD in 46 languages

Rutger Bregman (born April 26, 1988) is a Dutch historian and author. He has published eight books on history, philosophy, anthropology and economics. His books Humankind: A Hopeful History (2020) and Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There (2017) were both Sunday Times and New York Times Best Sellers and have been translated in 46 languages.

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The Guardian described him as ‍”the Dutch wunderkind of new ideas”, while TED named him "one of Europe's most prominent young thinkers". His TED Talk, "Poverty Isn't a Lack of Character; It's a Lack of Cash", was selected by TED curator Chris Anderson as one of the top ten talks of 2017.

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Bregman was born in Renesse, the Netherlands, to a father who was a pastor and a mother who worked as a special needs teacher. He studied History at Utrecht University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Initially considering a career as an academic historian, Bregman instead ventured into journalism. He began his career at the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant before moving to the independent journalism platform De Correspondent, for which he wrote for ten years. 

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In 2024, he co-founded The School for Moral Ambition, a non-profit organization inspired by his latest book that wants to help as many people as possible to take the step towards a job with a positive impact.

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Imagine: an international movement of ambitious do-gooders who want to make the world a better place. A nonprofit organization with hubs all around the world. An alliance of idealists taking on the biggest problems of our time, whether we're talking about climate change or tax evasion, extreme poverty or the tobacco industry. And we’ll call it: The School for Moral Ambition.

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This was the mildly megalomaniacal dream that filled Rutger’s mind in spring 2023. He was writing a book on the theme of moral ambition, about the drive to drastically improve the world.

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Rutger wanted to know more about the pioneers in our history that did take action, so he started reading about the British antislavery movement in the eighteenth century. That was the first major, successful movement in support of human rights. One simple fact in particular fascinated him about that movement: almost all the founders were businessmen in their own right. More precisely: ten of the 12 founders of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade owned their own company.

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They were people who knew how to build and scale up, who combined a healthy dose of idealism with an equally significant dose of ambition. That's when it dawned on Rutger: isn’t that exactly what we need now in our fight against the big problems that the world faces today?

He decided to start looking for those people. He was seeking people who already had experience in building organizations, and would know how we could bring to fruition that mildly megalomaniacal dream of a ‘School for Moral Ambition’. He found his three co-founders: a designer, consultant, and a banker.