World Record Holder in Making People Smile
What do you get when you mix Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, unicycling, juggling while running marathons, and social activism? Zach Warren.
This energetic Harvard Divinity School graduate is the world record holder in three madcap, but remarkable, categories: Fastest Marathon While Juggling Three Objects, 2:52.15; Fastest Mile on a Unicycle, 3:26.22; and Fastest Mile on a Unicycle While Juggling, 3:50.63.
Warren, who earned his undergraduate degree from Earlham College—a well-known Quaker school in Indiana—perfected his unicycling and juggling skills at Pittsburgh’s Zany Umbrella Circus. He worked at the circus part-time, while also studying at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz School of Public Policy and Management. When he left Pittsburgh three years ago, those circus skills served him well.
That’s when he joined the Afghan Mini Mobile Circus, an international nonprofit that entertains and teaches children in Afghanistan. Two summers ago, Warren volunteered with the circus. He taught juggling and unicycling to youngsters in Afghanistan, ages 4 to 14. Together, they’d create acts the children would perform for friends and family. Parents enjoyed the show, but what they said they most enjoyed was seeing their little boys and girls—who don’t have many reasons to smile in their war-torn country—have fun. Warren returned home to Cambridge, Mass. humbled but inspired. Through unicycling and joggling (juggling while jogging), he has traveled across the country raising money and awareness for the Mini Mobile Circus. “Why not fund raise a more traditional way?” he is sometimes asked. “It’s that, or else a bake sale,” Warren jokes, “and I’m a lousy baker.”
Thanks to a one-year traveling grant from Harvard, he has taken his road show abroad again. He started in Afghanistan and will eventually journey across Asia. Throughout the year, he says he will research what he calls the “healing power of laughter.” To do so, he expects to create plenty of laughter along the way. —Elizabeth May
Warren entertains Afghanistan audiences when he isn’t juggling his way through marathons.
