Hank Green Bio

Hank Green was born William Henry Green II on May 5, 1980, in Birmingham, Alabama, US, to Mike and Sydney Green. His brother, John Michael Green, is a vlogger, author, writer, editor, actor, and producer with whom he collaborates on different projects.

He grew up in Orlando, Florida where his family relocated soon after his birth. In Florida, he attended Winter Park High School from where he graduated in 1998. He started developing and designing his websites as also that of local clients during his high school days which he continued through college life.

He attended Eckerd College and obtained a B.S. degree in Biochemistry. Thereafter, he enrolled at the University of Montana where he earned an M.S. degree in Environmental Studies, submitting his thesis titled Of Both Worlds: How the Personal Computer and the Environmental Movement Change Everything.

While in Montana, he concentrated more on creating sites for environmental non-profit organizations as also for educational institutes that included his university. During this time, he created his environmental technology blog EcoGeek that with time emerged as a major publication.

His writings also found a place in several environmental blogs like Planet Green, The Weather Channel, The National Geographic Green Guide, Yahoo! Green, and Scientific American.

Hank Green remained a regular writer of Dennis Publishing’s print, digital, and e-commerce media company Mental Floss in the mid-2000s. He co-wrote the book Mental Floss: Scatterbrained.

Inspired by the show with zefrank, Hank and his brother John came up with the concept of the video blog project Brotherhood 2.0 that the two launched on January 1, 2007, and ran through the year.

The concept of Brotherhood 2.0 saw the brothers communicating through vlogs on each weekday stopping all text-based communication for a year. Such vlogs were made publicly available through their website and YouTube channel Vlogbrothers.

Hank Green has written, recorded, and performed many songs after he took up a challenge to perform an original song bi-weekly. Two such songs are What Would Captain Picard Do? and I'm Gonna Kill You.

Their first breakthrough as vloggers came when Hank posted a video where he sang Accio Deathly Hallows, paying homage to the seventh Harry Potter book, on July 18, 2007. The video marked the first of the Vlogbrothers to flash on YouTube’s front page.

In late 2007, the Green brothers launched a YouTube-based community-driven charitable movement called Project For Awesome (P4A) where YouTubers get an opportunity to promote their favorite charity by developing innovative videos and aiming to create awareness and raise funds for the charity.

Called the Nerdfighter Power Project for Awesome earlier, P4A takes place every December traditionally on the 17 and 18 of the month. It raised a record amount of $1,546,384 in 2015.

Following the Brotherhood 2.0 project, the popularity of their vlogs motivated the Green brothers to continue posting videos. They established a website called Nerdfighters for their community which was initially maintained by Hank Green.

At present, the Ningmasters, a team of volunteers of the community update Nerdfighters, where videos, new projects, and discussions developed by the fan community of Vlogbrothers are posted daily.

The Green brothers upload vlogs every Tuesday and Friday and their subjects vary from current affairs, jokes, random topics, Question Tuesdays, and many more.

Today, Vlogbrothers boasts of having a count of more than 3.4 million subscribers who form the base of the online community Nerdfighteria. Vlogbrothers is legally owned by their company Complexly.

In November 2008, the Green brothers went on a national tour, meeting thousands of Nerdfighters at different venues. This is when Hank Green released his debut album So Jokes comprising Nerdfighter-themed songs.

Other albums released by Hank over the years include This Machine Pwns N00bs (2009), Ellen Hardcastle (2011), and Incongruent (2014) with the latter featuring his backing band The Perfect Strangers for the first time.

The e-commerce merchandise company DFTBA Records which was initially established as a record label, was co-founded by Hank Green with Alan Lastufka in 2008. It presently concentrates on selling merchandise for leading YouTube sensations, including Hank.

Hank Green and John conceived the multi-genre online video conference VidCon, which has been held every year since 2010 in Southern California. It has evolved as the largest convention worldwide and led the brothers to launch another conference focussed on storytelling, NerdCon: Stories, in 2015.

The Green brothers launched their education-based YouTube channel Crash Course in January 2012, where initially Hank and John focussed on science and humanities courses respectively. With time, new hosts like Emily Graslie, Phil Plait, and Craig Benzine joined the channel with the introduction of new courses like Philosophy, Physics, and Astronomy.

Crash Course was successful in receiving acclaim from both teachers and students and received grants from Bill Gates' bgC3. It went into partnership with PBS Digital Studios in pursuit of producing more courses from January 2015. Its funding however chiefly comes from viewers’ backing through Patreon.

In January 2012, he launched the science-based YouTube channel SciShow, initially hosting it individually and later joined by Michael Aranda and featuring Lindsey Doe and Emily Graslie occasionally. Its success led to the launch of its spin-offs SciShow Space in April 2014; SciShow Kids in March 2015; and SciShow Psych in March 2017.

Hank Green created a video on September 14, 2012, to commemorate the 1000th video on the Vlogbrothers channel.

He was associated with several web series of Pemberley Digital as an executive producer including The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (2012-13), Welcome to Sanditon (2013), Emma Approved (2013-14), and Frankenstein, MD (2014).

The Green brothers formed a monthly subscription-based crowd-funding platform Subbable in 2013 that was acquired by Patreon in March 2015.

In November 2020, the brothers launched a new subscription service under the name “Awesome Socks Club.” As the name gives out, the service provides the members with a pair of socks designed by various independent artists. The profits of the service are donated to Partners in Health, an international non-profit health organization. In March 2022, they came out with “Awesome Coffee Club,” a service that runs on a similar model as “Awesome Socks Club.” They run another charity organization named “Sun Basin Soap” which they launched in April 2023.

Hank Green, who describes himself as an atheist, has been married to Katherine Green since 2006. The couple is blessed with a son, Orin, born in October 2016. They live in Missoula, Montana.