Ruth Carter is the pseudonym for the author of Amway Motivational Organizations: Behind the Smoke and Mirrors. Because of fears for her own and her family’s safety, no photos are available. Ms. Carter graduated in 1975 from a well-known liberal arts college in New England, with a BA in English. She has worked for a local weekly newspaper, and a weekly business newspaper. As a freelancer, Ms. Carter has also had many articles published in business-oriented magazines and newspapers. She has been self-employed in traditional business for much of her working life. Amway Motivational Organizations: Behind the Smoke and Mirrors is her first book. Ms. Carter was recruited and sponsored into the Amway business in 1982 but allowed her distributorship to lapse in 1997. During the last five years of that time, she was employed by her upline “Diamond Direct” distributor. It was as the employee of this high-level distributor that she finally saw behind the scenes to the deceptions, lies, and frauds that are standard operating procedure among the higher echelons of the Amway Motivational Organizations. Sickened at the unwitting part she had played in deceiving and taking advantage of other distributors, Ms. Carter decided to make public what she knew. She started a website, called The MLM Survivors Homepage, which includes information about many multi-level marketing “opportunities.” That site now receives over 150,000 pageviews per month. She also wrote her book in an attempt to reach people without internet access. Ms. Carter still maintains an active presence on the Internet, despite harassment and the threat of reprisal from Amway. She responds personally to about 100 e-mails per week from people with questions or concerns about Amway, Quixtar, or other MLMs. She has recently joined with Assistant Attorney General (retired) Bruce Craig of Wisconsin in a petition to request that the Federal Trade Commission re-examine Amway’s compliance with the rules that defined it as a “legal” pyramid scheme in 1979, and with Jon Taylor, head of the Consumer Awareness Institute, in a similar petition regarding NuSkin. Ms. Carter lives in Florida with her wonderfully supportive husband and children. They are trying to figure out what a “normal” life is, following their lengthy Amway involvement.