Born in Salt Lake City, Clayton M. Christensen grew up in a Mormon family and served as a missionary in South Korea from 1971 to 1973; he speaks fluent Korean. He earned a summa cum laude degree in economics from Brigham Young University, then attended Queen’s College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, where he received an M.Phil. in applied econometrics and played some basketball, as he had in college. (He stands six feet, eight inches, and remarks, “I’d rather play basketball than eat.” His six-foot, 10-inch son Matt played on the 2001 NCAA championship team at Duke.) Christensen was a Baker Scholar (a top academic honor) at Harvard Business School, and became a White House Fellow in 1982, serving as an assistant to secretaries of transportation Drew Lewis and Elizabeth Dole.
