Kurt Gusinde was born in Hayward, California. At age 11, his family moved to the small Pacific Northwest town of McMinnville, Oregon. Kurt has spent the majority of his adult life in and around the Pacific Northwest city of Portland, Oregon; however, he now resides in Scottsdale, Arizona.

He is a graduate of Oregon State University (1979) and obtained his MBA in International Finance from The American Graduate School of International Finance (Thunderbird) in 1996. In addition, he is a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) and a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).

Kurt has over twenty-five years of professional investment management experience and currently serves as Vice-President and Senior Investment Manager within Exeter Financial. He is responsible for the management of investment accounts for individual, trust and foundation clients.

Kurt’s interest in the outdoors grew as a result of his many years of involvement in Boy Scouts – both as a youth and then as an adult leader. With excellent mentoring and encouragement from his leaders, Kurt was able to achieve the highest rank of Eagle Scout.

After graduating from Oregon State University and while living in Portland, Oregon, Kurt joined the Mazamas climbing club. It was here that he began to learn about technical climbing on both snow and rock. Although he no longer lives in the Pacific Northwest, Kurt is still a member of the Mazamas and manages to join in on a few of their climbs and hikes each year. Kurt is also an active member of the Phoenix-based Arizona Mountaineering Club.

After completing graduate school and the CFA program, Kurt was able to return to his passion of climbing. Upon completion of advanced training in climbing and winter mountaineering from Rainier Mountaineering International (RMI), Kurt began to tackle some of the higher and more challenging peaks around the world. In addition to his numerous climbs in North America, Kurt has climbed in Mexico, South America, Africa, Nepal, Antarctica, Indonesia and Europe.

If successful on Everest in the spring of 2009, Kurt will have achieved his "Summit Dream" of climbing the highest peak on each continent.

As passionate as Kurt is about climbing, his number one priority remains his faith in Jesus Christ. "We were put on this earth to love God and to love and serve others." Matt: 22:36 "I am embarrassed how often I seem to fail in those two areas. However, that remains my life goal."