Francis Tapon’s mother is from Chile and his father is from France. They met in San Francisco thanks to a slow elevator.

His brother, Philippe Tapon, is the author of A Parisian from Kansas and The Mistress, published by Dutton.

Francis was born and raised in San Francisco, California where he attended a French school for 12 years. He is fluent in English, French, and Spanish. Proficient in Portuguese, Italian, and Russian. Horrible in Chinese and Japanese.

He earned a Religion Degree with honors from Amherst College, and wrote his thesis on the Bahá'í Faith and the Worldwide Church of God.

After working for Hitachi in Latin America, he earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.

After Harvard he co-founded SIGHTech Vision Systems, a robotic vision company. Four years later he sold his stake to hike the Appalachian Trail.

He consulted at Microsoft before hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 2006.

In 2007 he became the first person to yo-yo the Continental Divide Trail. This seven month journey spanned nearly 6,000 miles. He backpacked from Mexico to Canada through New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. Once he reached Canada, he turned around and walked back to Mexico.

Today Francis is a speaker and life coach. He delivers fun and informative speeches on getting your life and your organization out of a rut and onto the ridge. He also runs workshops to delve deeply into the Seven Principles and offers individual coaching too.

He is donating half of his book royalty to the Triple Crown of thru-hiking—Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail.

His next book will be about his travels in Eastern Europe. It will be out in 2010 and will be called The Hidden Europe: What Eastern Europeans Can Teach Us.

After that, he plans to spend a year visiting every country in Africa and plans to write a book about that too.