Opening Business Session Keynote Speaker

Christopher Gardner

Presented in Partnership with E-Z-GO, a CMAA Platinum Advantage Partner

Christopher Gardner is the owner and CEO of Christopher Gardner International Holdings with offices in New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Surmounting acute obstacles on his road to success, Gardner is an avid motivational speaker, addressing the keys to self-empowerment, beating odds and breaking cycles. Gardner is also a passionate philanthropist committed to many charitable organizations. He is currently working on an investment project in South Africa that seeks to improve the lives of thousands of previously disadvantaged South African entrepreneurs.

The amazing story of Gardner’s life was published as an autobiography, The Pursuit of Happyness, (Amistad/Harper Collins) on May 23, 2006, and became a New York Times and Washington Post #1 bestseller. In paperback, the book has gone on to spend more than 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Gardner was also the inspiration for the movie The Pursuit of Happyness released by Columbia Pictures on December 15, 2006. The movie was #1 at the box office its opening weekend. Will Smith starred as Gardner and received Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award nominations for his performance. Gardner was an associate producer on the movie.

Always hard working and tenacious, a series of circumstances in the early 1980s left Gardner homeless in San Francisco and the sole guardian of his toddler son. Unwilling to give up Chris, Jr., or his dream of financial independence, Gardner started at the bottom. Without connections or a college degree, he earned a spot in the Dean Witter Reynolds training program. Often spending his nights in a church shelter or the bathroom at a Bay Area Rapid Transit station in Oakland, Gardner was the sole trainee offered a job at Dean Witter Reynolds in 1981. He spent 1983-1987 at Bear Stearns & Co., where he became a top earner, and then in 1987, he founded the brokerage firm Gardner Rich & Co. in Chicago.

Born February 9, 1954, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Gardner never knew his father. He lived with his mother, Bettye Jean Gardner, whom he adored, and, when necessary, in foster homes. Despite a life of hardship and emotional scarring, his mother provided him with strong “spiritual genetics” and taught him some of the greatest lessons of his life, which he follows to this day. Bettye Jean convinced him that in spite of where he came from, he could attain whatever goals he set for himself by saying, “If you want to, one day you could make a million dollars.” Gardner believed this to be fact, and knew he would have to find a career he could be passionate about, and one that would allow him to “be world-class at something.”

Straight out of high school, Gardner enlisted in the Navy, just like his uncles, his role models, had done. After the military, Gardner went to San Francisco and took a job as a medical supply salesman. Then he reached a turning point in his life. In a parking lot, he met a man driving a red Ferrari. “He was looking for a parking space. I said, ‘You can have mine, but I gotta ask you two questions.’ The two questions were: What do you do? And how do you do that? Turns out this guy was a stockbroker and he was making $80,000 a month.”

That pivotal encounter gave Gardner a clear career goal and he began knocking on doors, applying for training programs at brokerages even though it meant he would have to live on next to nothing while he learned. When he was finally accepted into a program, he left his job in medical sales. But his plans collapsed when the man who offered him the training slot was fired, and Gardner had no job to go back to. Then he was put in jail for $1,200 in parking violations he couldn’t pay. Chris, Jr.’s mother left and Gardner, despite his circumstances, fought to keep his son because, as he says, “I made up my mind as a young kid that when I had children they were going to know who their father is, and that he isn’t going anywhere.”

Finally managing to enter the training program at Dean Witter Reynolds, Gardner’s meager stipend as a trainee meant he, like so many working poor in America, had a job but couldn’t make ends meet. Gardner’s co-workers never knew he spent his evenings trying to arrange day care, and find food and a safe place for him and his son to sleep. After spending nights in a locked bathroom at an Oakland subway station, Gardner persuaded Rev. Cecil Williams, founder of a new shelter program for homeless women at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church, to let him and Chris, Jr., stay at the shelter.

Gardner passed his licensing exam in 1981 on the first try. He arrived early, stayed late and worked the phones day after day to lure new clients. He and Chris Jr. got an apartment, and in 1983 he joined Bear, Stearns & Company. After becoming a top producer, first in San Francisco and later in New York, Gardner left in 1987 to establish Gardner Rich & Company, Inc., an institutional brokerage firm specializing in the execution of debt, equity and derivative products transactions for some of the nations largest institutions, public pension plans and unions. The company has expanded into Christopher Gardner International Holdings and now has a business project underway in South Africa.

Gardner reaches out to many programs serving the homeless, donating time, assistance and funds. Foremost among these are the Glide United Methodist Church in San Francisco and The Cara Program in Chicago. At Glide, Gardner assists with fundraising, donates clothes and shoes and speaks at services and events. He is also involved in a plan to revitalize and provide new housing in the neighborhood around Glide. At Cara, which assists the homeless and at-risk populations in Chicago with comprehensive job training and placement, Gardner speaks at counseling sessions, assists with permanent job placement and also donates clothing and shoes.

Gardner serves as a board member of the National Fatherhood Initiative, whose mission is to improve the well-being of children by increasing the proportion of children growing up with involved, responsible and committed fathers. Gardner was the recipient of the group’s Father of the Year Award in 2002.

Gardner is particularly committed to educational organizations. He serves on the board of the National Education Foundation and sponsors two annual awards: the National Education Association’s National Educational Support Personnel Award and the American Federation of Teachers’ Paraprofessionals and School-Related Personnel (PSRP) Award. He is also involved with the Chicago Teachers’ Union, sponsoring activities and outings for Chicago public school kids.

In addition to the Father of the Year Award, Gardner has also been honored by the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women (LACAAW) with the 25th Annual Humanitarian Award, and by the Continental Africa Chamber of Commerce with the 2006 Friends of Africa Award.

Chris Gardner is working on a project in South Africa to increase the employment opportunities, economic stability and wealth distribution of an emerging nation. Working with the support of South African government and labor unions, and with the guidance of the financial professionals responsible for investing the largest of U.S. pension assets, Gardner Rich, in conjunction with previously disadvantaged South African entrepreneurs, will buy established, stable companies based in South Africa and transform them to compete in the more inclusive South African economy. In doing so, Gardner will directly improve the lives of more than 85,000 South Africans by including company employees in his ownership structures. While the social benefits to the people of South Africa are great, the economic motivation is to capitalize upon the previously suppressed work ethic of the South African people and benefit from their fervent desire to be a part of their new dynamic economy; to this end, Gardner is proud to help them achieve and share in their goals.

Chris Gardner’s remarkable story of struggle, faith, entrepreneurialism and fatherly devotion has catapulted him beyond the notoriety he has found on Wall Street. He has been featured on the “Evening News with Dan Rather,” “20/20,” “Oprah,” “Today Show,” “The View,” “Entertainment Tonight,” CNN, CNBC, Fox News Channel as well as being the subject of profiles in numerous newspapers and magazines including People, USA Today, Associated Press, New York Times, Fortune, Jet, Reader’s Digest, Trader Monthly, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Post, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He is also a highly sought-after speaker.

Gardner has two children and resides in Chicago and New York.