Rutger Bregman is Historian and Author of 3 best sellers translateD in 46 languages

Rutger Bregman (born 1988) is a Dutch historian, bestselling author, and co-founder of The School for Moral Ambition.

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He made his international breakthrough with his bestseller Utopia for Realists (36 languages), followed by Humankind (46 languages) and Moral Ambition (32 languages and counting). His work has sold around 2.5 million copies worldwide.

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The Guardian described him as 'the Dutch wunderkind of new ideas', and 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', went viral and was selected by TED curator Chris Anderson as one of the top ten talks of 2017.

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Bregman studied History at Utrecht University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Though he initially considered a career as an academic historian, he ventured instead into journalism. He began his career at the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant before moving to the independent journalism platform De Correspondent, where he wrote for ten years.

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In 2024, Rutger co-founded The School for Moral Ambition, a non-profit organization inspired by his latest book. The initiative helps people to take the step toward an impactful career.

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In December 2025, Bregman delivered the prestigious BBC Reith Lectures.

Imagine: an international movement of ambitious changemakers tackling the world's biggest problems, from climate change to tax evasion, extreme poverty to the tobacco industry. This was Rutger's vision in spring 2023: The School for Moral Ambition.

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While writing his book on moral ambition, Rutger studied the eighteenth-century British antislavery movement, the first major, successful human rights campaign. One fact stood out: ten of its twelve founders were entrepreneurs who owned their own companies.

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These were people who knew how to build and scale, combining idealism with ambition. Rutger realized: isn't that exactly what we need to solve today's greatest challenges?

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He set out to find those people: individuals with proven experience building organizations who could help turn this ambitious dream into reality. He found his co-founders: a designer, a consultant, an entrepreneur, and a banker.

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