Hank Green American YouTuber Born 1980 in Birmingham

Early life

William Henry Green II, known as Hank Green, was born on 5 May 1980 in Birmingham, Alabama. His family soon moved to Orlando, Florida, where he grew up. He graduated from Winter Park High School in 1998 and studied biochemistry at Eckerd College, finishing in 2002. He later completed a master's degree in environmental studies at the University of Montana. Through school he built websites for himself and for local clients, and he kept working as a web developer while he was a graduate student, mainly for educational institutions and environmental nonprofits.

Career

During graduate school he started EcoGeek, a blog about technology that benefits the environment. It began as a class project and grew into a respected environmental publication, and in the mid-2000s he also wrote for Mental Floss and co-authored one of its books. EcoGeek was later renamed Complexly, the company that now produces most of his video and audio projects; he served as its chief executive until late 2023.

His best-known work started in 2007 with Brotherhood 2.0, a year-long project in which he and his brother, the author John Green, swapped written messages for daily video blogs. The vlogs went out on the channel Vlogbrothers and drew a following that called itself Nerdfighters. The channel kept running afterwards and has passed four million subscribers. In 2012 the brothers launched the educational channel Crash Course, built around high-school subjects, and Hank also created SciShow, a science channel he hosts. Further channels followed under his name, including PBS Eons, Journey to the Microcosmos, and Bizarre Beasts.

He has also produced online fiction. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice in video-blog form, was created in 2012 with Bernie Su and produced by Pemberley Digital. He wrote his first novel, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, in 2018, and a sequel, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, appeared in 2020; both reached the New York Times bestseller list. In 2024 he published a third book, The Book of Good Times. His podcasts include Dear Hank & John with his brother, Delete This with his wife, and SciShow Tangents. He began posting on TikTok in September 2019 and built a very large audience there.

Green is also a musician. He began writing and performing songs during Brotherhood 2.0, released the album So Jokes in 2008, and later recorded with the band Hank Green and the Perfect Strangers, whose album Incongruent appeared in 2014. His label work ran through DFTBA Records, which he co-founded in 2008 and which today sells merchandise for online creators. On screen, his one listed credit is the series Dimension 20 in 2018. In 2025 he partnered with Honey B Games on the productivity app Focus Friend, which reached the top of Apple's free app chart.

Public roles

With his brother he co-created VidCon, a conference about online video that first took place in 2010, and the Project for Awesome, an annual charity event that began in 2007. They also launched Subbable, a subscription crowdfunding platform that Patreon acquired in 2015. In 2016 Green founded the Internet Creators Guild, a nonprofit meant to represent online creators, which closed in 2019. The brothers later started Good Store, whose subscription products direct their operating profit to charity.

Personal life

Green has been married to Katherine Green since 2006, and the two live in Missoula, Montana. She appears with him on the podcast Delete This.