Alan Phillip Gross

Alan Phillip Gross is a United States government contractor employed by United States Agency for International Development .

Gross was born in New York to a Jewish family and later moved to Maryland. He studied sociology at the University of Maryland and social work at Virginia Commonwealth University. He had a long career as an international development worker who had been active in some 50 countries and territories across the Middle East, Africa and Europe, including Iraq and Afghanistan, where he was setting up satellite communications systems to NGOs.

Source: Wikipedia