My Top 40 at 40: Making the First Half Count

Story by story by story, Kari Loya's My Top 40 at 40 becomes a primer on the alchemy of adventure. After he's carried you up mountains crawling with tarantulas, plunged you in mud volcanoes and man-eating Cuban potholes, taken you on a sleep-over atop a Guatemalan pyramid, introduced you to frightening Serbian giants and Japanese sumo wrestlers and taught you how to transform an Argentinean beauty into a wife, it dawns on you: the tarantulas and mud volcanoes and pyramids and giants are all just wonderful props. The magic all occurs in the spirit and imagination of one human being...who could be you. - Gary Smith, Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated and Four-Time National Magazine Award Winner

Kari Loya is an educational leader, executive coach, storyteller, and adventurer. He has worked nearly three decades at a range of innovative educational institutions, beginning with Teach For America in 1993 and serving most recently as headmaster at the Good Hope Country Day School in the U.S. Virgin Islands, when he received a Klingenstein Fellowship from Columbia University. He is also an Emmy-winning bilingual voice talent ( musical artist ( and author (Conversations Across America; My Top 40 at 40). He spoke at TEDx UC Davis in April 2022 on the theme of "Metamorphosis." He holds a BA from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Columbia University. He currently lives with his wife and daughter in Sugar Land, Texas.