KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Entrepreneur & Author | The Inspiration Behind 'The Pursuit of Happyness'
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WHY CHRIS
Chris Gardner rose from homelessness to building a thriving brokerage firm — and shows audiences how resilience, self-belief, and relentless perseverance turn impossible odds into success.
KEYNOTE TOPICS
Gardner tells the full story behind the book and film — the unpaid internship, the homeless shelter, the stockbroker exam, raising his son through it all. It's a masterclass in perseverance that leaves audiences moved and equipped to face their own hardest moments.
Drawing on his most recent bestseller, Gardner challenges audiences to define a meaningful future on their own terms and build it deliberately — with a practical framework for setting audacious goals and sustaining motivation through setbacks.
Gardner unpacks the strategic decisions that turned $10,000 into a successful Chicago brokerage: identifying the right industry, executing under pressure, building credibility from nothing, and the hard pivots life forces on any founder.
Gardner introduces "spiritual genetics" — the values, habits, and choices we inherit, reject, or pass on. Drawing on his commitment as a single father, he challenges leaders to take ownership of the legacy and culture they build.
Chris Gardner is an entrepreneur, international bestselling author, and philanthropist whose journey from homelessness to Wall Street success is one of the most celebrated stories of personal reinvention of our time. In the early 1980s, enrolled in an unpaid stockbroker-training program and raising his toddler son alone, Gardner spent nearly a year homeless on the streets of San Francisco — sleeping in shelters and train stations while he studied. He passed his Series 7 exam on the first attempt, excelled at Dean Witter and then Bear Stearns, and in 1987 founded the brokerage firm Gardner Rich & Co. with just $10,000, building it into a multimillion-dollar institutional business.
In 2006 he sold his stake, published his memoir The Pursuit of Happyness — a #1 New York Times bestseller translated into more than forty languages — and saw his life brought to the screen by Will Smith, whose portrayal earned an Academy Award nomination. A Peabody Award-winning producer and the author of Start Where You Are and Permission to Dream, Gardner today devotes much of his energy to philanthropy and to speaking, championing causes from homelessness and financial literacy to the fight against domestic violence. His keynotes are especially powerful as the opening or closing note for sales kickoffs, leadership summits, and culture-defining moments.
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