Warner Woodworth

Warner Woodworth’s life has been one of working to reduce poverty in a hundred countries. With collaborators, he has helped established forty-one NGOs (nongovernment organizations) that currently operate in sixty-two nations. Married and blessed with ten children, he has served in multiple bishoprics, in a mission presidency, and on several high councils. Formerly, he was an institute director, a full-time seminary teacher, and a professor at multiple colleges, primarily at the Marriott School of Business, Brigham Young University. He has published twelve books and more than three hundred articles, and he has presented his research at nearly a thousand academic conferences. But those were his “day jobs.” This paper draws on his life as a Latter-day Saint global-change agent, as well as a practicing academic. Now in his eighty-second year—after teaching at BYU and other universities such as Rio de Janeiro, the University of Michigan, and Claremont in southern California—he is accelerating his writing to bear witness of Christ and advocate for the poor. Seeking to engage others in applying their abilities to serve the world’s “have-nots” is his lifelong mission.