STEPHEN GRACE is director of marketing for China Travel and Tour, as well as vice president of G2 Adventures. He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a bachelor's degree in psychology. While studying at the university, he worked as a deckhand on Mississippi riverboats and later served as a caretaker for a Cambridge house in which T.S. Eliot once lived. Stephen's first experience with starting a business was an outdoor adventure program for at-risk youth, which gave him a good background when he was asked to help found and manage an international travel company. Stephen has worked and traveled extensively throughout China, gaining enough competence and familiarity with the country to develop cultural immersion programs for high schools, cultural institutes, and organizations devoted to global leadership. He has also led travel seminars and taught basic spoken Chinese classes for groups from the University of Colorado, Alexander Dawson High School, Colorado Springs Chinese Cultural Institute, and the Orbis Institute. Prestigious universities such as Harvard Business School, Stanford University Graduate School of Business, UCLA Anderson School of Management, and Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science have asked Stephen to assist in sending their programs to China. Stephen is the author of a novel, Under Cottonwoods (The Lyons Press, 2004), and three nonfiction books: It Happened in Denver (Globe Pequot Press, 2007); Colorado Icons: 50 Classic Views of the Centennial State (Globe Pequot Press 2009); and Colorado: Mapping the Centennial State through History: Rare and Unusual Maps from the Library of Congress (Globe Pequot Press 2009). He lives in Boulder, Colorado.
