Priit Vesilind

Who is Priit Vesilind?

Priit Juho Vesilind is an Estonian and American senior writer and photojournalist of National Geographic magazine and an author of nonfiction.

In 1944, when Vesilind was one and a half, his mother Aino took him and his brother Aarne and fled to Czechoslovakia. The family was fleeing the Soviet occupation of his homeland during World War II. Later, his father Paul Eduard Vesilind rejoined his wife and children and they spent the next five years after the war in displaced persons camps in Geislingen, Germany. In 1949 the family emigrated to the United States of America. He spent his childhood in Beaver, PA, a small town in Western Pennsylvania. He is a 1964 graduate of the liberal arts college of Colgate University, located in the town of Hamilton in Madison County, New York, earning a BA in English and then an MA in Communications Photography from Syracuse University.

Prior to working for National Geographic, Vesilind served as a Lieutenant in the United States Naval Reserve, stationed at the Naval Communications Station, Hawaii. He was a reporter and editor for the Atlanta Journal, the Syracuse Herald Tribune, and the Providence Journal. Vesilind's career at National Geographic spanned more than thirty years and he rose to the position of the magazine's Expedition's Editor and Senior Writer.