WILL PEARSON

Will Pearson is the co-founder of mental_floss magazine and president of Mental Floss LLC.  Since its launch in 2001, the rapidly growing Birmingham, Alabama-based media company has brought a series of award-winning products to market.

Pearson attributes his company’s impressive track record to its ability to create quirky, one-of-a-kind content that blurs the lines between education and entertainment and to form joint alliances with some of America’s leading companies, including AOL, HarperCollins and Reader’s Digest.

In addition to its highly-acclaimed magazine, the company under Pearson’s leadership has published three books (with four more slated for 2006), launched mental_floss: The Trivia Game and developed a popular Web site.

Pearson, who has appeared over 80 times on CNN Headline News and has been interviewed on over 50 other TV and radio programs across the country, showed an early interest in learning and began making lists of everything on his mind when he was 12 years old.  World capitals, incredible works of art, great moments in sports history, left-handed Hollywood stars with tall pets...you name it, he's got the list. But don't let his membership in the obsessive compulsive club fool you.

Although he prefers to live by the rules, as most with OCD do, he's not afraid to make new rules when he's tired of the old ones (which is why we have mental_floss). Pearson met Mangesh Hattikudur as a first year student at Duke University. Ignoring the lures of law school and investment banking, the pair co-founded mental_floss magazine and have been grinning ever since.

Pearson received a B.A. in history with magna cum laude honors from Duke University, where he was a member of both the Phi Eta Sigma Honor Society and the National Society of Collegiate Scholars.