Like many kids, Danny Seo decided at age 12 that he'd like to try to save the world. Unlike most kids, he's gone a long way toward doing just that.
If you haven't already heard of Seo -- who founded Earth 2000 with $10 at the age of 12, and remained CEO of this award-winning nonprofit organization (now with 25,000 paid members, a six-figure budget and offices in Pennsylvania and D.C.) until he was 19 -- you soon will. Seo's second book, Heaven on Earth: 15-Minute Miracles to Change the World, will be published in hardcover this May by Pocket Books.
Already featured on "Oprah's Angel Network" for being the sole noncorporate sponsor of a Habitat for Humanity house, the tireless Seo, now 21, has also been featured in Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal and Family Circle, named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People of 1998" and received an Albert Schweitzer Award.
Seo combines Albert Schweitzer's heart with Rupert Murdoch's brain and Martha Stewart's savvy for public relations -- to name his own three role models. Single-handedly raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for environmental and child-protection causes since age 12, he's an entrepreneurial dynamo. "Adults saw Earth 2000 as this naive, idealistic dream, but even at 12 I knew that wasn't necessarily a negative thing," Seo recalled for PW. "It worked to our advantage -- reporters love writing about young people making a positive difference." Seo did his own PR and "one story led to a dozen more," including a piece in the National Enquirer that got Earth 2000 another thousand paid members.
Convinced that young people feel apathetic about the future only because "they don't know how to go about solving problems," Seo wrote his Generation React (Ballantine) as "sort of an introductory activism course."Similarly, Heaven on Earth was born from viewer e-mail response after Oprah. "Apparently I inspired people -- so why couldn't they take action on their own? I realized that even adults need to learn activism basics, so Heaven on Earth is a marriage of inspiration with practical education."
In it, Seo offers such practical examples of "15-minute miracles" as donating frequent-flier miles to a children's charity, which buys kids air tickets to hospitals. "Or donate old fur coats to a firm that makes teddy bears from them, then sells them to benefit the Kidney Foundation," Seo suggested. Pocket's senior editor Nancy Miller made a preemptive offer to Seo's agent, Joseph Regal (of Russell &Volkening) for world rights, first serial and an audio option. An eight-city book tour is planned (New York, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, Atlanta and Washington, D.C., now Seo's home). Promotion plans also include extensive print advertising and a radio satellite tour.
The Korean-American son of an anesthesiologist and a homemaker, Seo shyly admitted he barely graduated from high school. "South Koreans raise their children to be independent, critical thinkers. I couldn't get interested in memorizing stuff." He enjoys the irony that he "flunked civics the semester I got environmental legislation passed," and was failing English when he signed the contract with Ballantine Books.
Seo is also part of this month's 1999 State of the World Forum in Mexico. Founded by Mikhail Gorbachev several years ago, the forum's discussions focus on improving human rights and the environment. "The theme in 1999 is young people," said Seo, "and it's an honor to be invited to speak with Lech Walesa, Desmond Tutu and Marion Wright Edelman [who contributed the introduction to Heaven on Earth].
"It's funny," added the voluble Seo, a popular lecturer on the college circuit. "When I was younger, people would pay me to shut up. Now I'm being paid to talk!"
