Harry Rutstein

Executive Director, Marco Polo Foundation, Inc.

Harry Rutstein is a modern-day Marco Polo. In 1975, after four years of research and ten years of travel, he became the first person to follow and complete the thirteenth-century explorer’s route across Europe and Asia. He is coauthor and photographer of In the Footsteps of Marco Polo: A Twentieth Century Odyssey published in 1980 by Viking Press, which tells the story of the first of three expeditions. In 1981, Rutstein produced and appeared in a documentary film of the second expedition entitled On the Roof of the World with Marco Polo, which premiered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and later presented in venues in the U.S. and abroad. Rutstein’s photography of his Marco Polo expeditions has been exhibited in art galleries and museums in New York and Baltimore.

Since 1975, Rutstein has written and lectured on Marco Polo throughout America, and on cruise liners around the world. He has been interviewed extensively on many radio and television stations and networks. Susan Stamberg and the Smithsonian Institution produced separate half hour shows on NPR about Rutstein and his project. Newspapers, wire services, and major publications including the Smithsonian and Adventure Travel magazines have featured stories and photographs of his Marco Polo exploits. The Royal Geographical Society of London has recognized Harry Rutstein’s contributions to adventure travel and historical education with the title of Fellow. The Explorers Club of New York has invited him for presentations and also named Rutstein a Fellow in their society. The Explorers Club was also a sponsor of the Marco Polo expedition.

Many organizations have engaged Rutstein’s services as a consultant, including NBC for their 1982 TV Series on Marco Polo, Asia Quest for their internet education program on Marco Polo (1999), and the Washington-based Simon and Barklee for their educational books and internet programs that included stories on Marco Polo (2006).

Harry Rutstein is founder and Executive Director of the Marco Polo Foundation, Inc. (www.marcopolofound.org), a nonprofit educational foundation established in 1980 and dedicated to providing a better understanding between the East and West.

Rutstein has been a merchant throughout his life as was his mentor Marco Polo. He sold high technology products made in China to the Western world. Dorado International Corp. was established for this purpose in China in 1978 by Rutstein with offices in Shanghai and Beijing. In 1988 he was invited by the Soviet Union to help them export their advanced electronic products to Western markets. By 2007 he sold all his interests in his businesses to spend full time writing his second book on his Marco Polo adventurers entitled The Marco Polo Odyssey.

In 1965 he established and became marketing director of Nurad, Inc. a developer and manufacturer of products for the telecom and defense industries. Nurad designed and built an electronic news gathering system for the TV industry that allowed for the first time, TV stations around the world to broadcast news events “live” at remote locations. Harry was also the cofounder in 1956 of Eastern Instrumentation, a manufacturers’ representative company with offices in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Washington, DC, selling and providing technical services for a wide range of electronic products for the telecommunication, computer and defense industries.

Harry attended Johns Hopkins University and became a research associate in the Physics Department, Radiation Lab up until 1955.

Harry has five children and two grandchildren, and lives with his wife Nancy in Seattle, Washington.