Photo courtesy of Nicole Morgenthau, all rights reserved.
Jennifer Jordan is an award-winning author, filmmaker, and screenwriter, with many years experience as a journalist, broadcast producer, radio and television news anchor, voice-over/narration talent and motivational speaker.
Her first book, Savage Summit: The Life and Death of the First Women of K2 (William Morrow, 2005), won the 2005 National Outdoor Book Award for Best Mountain Literature and was selected as an Editors' Choice by The New York Times. She also created, wrote, and co-produced the documentary Women of K2 for National Geographic, which was an official entry in scores of major film festivals, winning five.
Jordan's second book, The Last Man on the Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2, (W. W. Norton, 2010) tells the story of the first man to die on K2 during the ill-fated 1939 expedition, whose skeletal remains Jordan found on the glacier below K2 base camp sixty-three years after his death. It won a 2010 National Outdoor Book Award for History/Biography and soon after publication was listed as a Best Seller in Sports books in the Wall Street Journal.
After the release of her first book and documentary, Jordan became a celebrated public speaker, and routinely addresses audiences of all ages and backgrounds on the many issues raised in her books and films.
In 2014 she released 3000 Cups of Tea: Investigating the Rise and Ruin of Greg Mortenson, a documentary she directed, wrote and produced which followed the meteoric rise and devastating fall of Greg Mortenson at the hands of a flawed 60 Minutes profile. While the film addresses the accusations leveled against him and his Central Asia Institute, the film focuses on Mortenson's mission to build schools and educate girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan, a mission which was mortally, but not fatally, wounded by the scandal. [Watch it free here: 3000 Cups of Tea]
More recently she has ghost written two acclaimed memoirs, Perfect Strangers and Southern Discomfort and is currently working on a third collaborative memoir with a self-made billionaire who actually earned his wealth through hard work, integrity and sheer will.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman…
Jordan spent most of the 1990s at WGBH-FM in Boston where she anchored National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition. She also worked with the acclaimed WGBH Channel 2, public television's most prolific production house, as an on-air talent, segment producer and host, researcher and writer. Before Jordan joined WGBH she created, produced, hosted and marketed her own public affairs/news talk show, which she syndicated nationally via NPR's satellite network.
She and her husband, cinematographer Jeff Rhoads, live in Salt Lake City, where they spend as much of their time as possible exploring the back country of the Wasatch Mountains.
Jeff Rhoads climbing in Utah, photo by Jennifer Jordan.