Patrick Atkinson

Patrick John Atkinson was born in Bismarck, North Dakota and attended Minnesota State University–Moorhead, later earning a Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management from Regis University in Denver, Colorado, with post-graduate studies at Harvard University and the University of Oxford.

After his studies, Patrick turned down lucrative corporate job offers to work with runaways, prostitutes, and gang members in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. Two years later, he moved to Central America, where he began an international career in war-zone reconciliation and post-war reconstruction.

He is the recipient of numerous international human rights awards, including the Guatemalan Congressional Medal, Benefactor of Antigua (an honor last awarded more than 475 years ago), Distinguished Citizen, and has been named Goodwill Peace Ambassador for Guatemala multiple times. He is also the subject of the biography The Dream Maker by Monica Hannan.

Patrick is the Founder and CEO of the award-winning programs The Institute for Trafficked, Exploited & Missing Persons, The Atkinson Center, and The GOD’S CHILD Project, and is the author or co-author of nine books, including the international selling Message for My Child and The Powerful You!, and the 2026 release Bananito: The Lost Boy the Toughest Streets Couldn’t Kill. He is a widely sought-after speaker on leadership, nonprofit management, and international human trafficking, and a federal court expert witness in human trafficking, domestic violence, and abuse cases.

When not being shot at, knifed, caught in car bombings, or traveling the world advocating on behalf of abused, abandoned, and human-trafficking victims, Patrick resides in Central America, in Bismarck, North Dakota, and at Hippo Wallow Pond, his family home outside Minneapolis, Minnesota.