Chris Gardner

Male

Black

Coarse public-record coding; race is a noisy, interpretive category.

African American

Descendant

not established

Not established. He turned to a church-run shelter as an adult out of need, which isn't evidence of how he was raised.

None established. He was homeless with his son while working a paying job; no family home or co-signer is documented as available to him.

His own roughly $1,000-a-month trainee pay at Dean Witter Reynolds, and nothing else. His son's mother had left, so there was no partner income.

1

His infant son, in his sole custody during the homeless period.

About $1,200 in unpaid parking tickets caught up with him right before his final Dean Witter interview; he was jailed for 10 days and showed up to the interview in the same clothes he'd been arrested in.

Close to a year homeless with his toddler son while working the Dean Witter trainee job: cheap hotels in West Oakland, a church shelter in the Tenderloin, his office after hours, parks, and at least one night locked in a BART station bathroom.

The hardship was imposed, not chosen. There was nothing to fall back on.

No fallback home is documented. He has described it as the lowest point of his life, not a chosen austerity.

His biological father, Thomas Turner, lived apart from the family in Louisiana and is documented as absent; Gardner says he met him only twice. His mother's occupation isn't established.

3

One older half-sister and two younger sisters.

2

A maternal uncle, Henry, gave him his first positive model of a working man and inspired the Navy enlistment, but drowned when Gardner was nine.

An immediate family member was incarcerated.

His mother was incarcerated during his childhood.

No criminal record established. Jailed for 10 days over unpaid parking tickets shortly before his final Dean Witter interview; a civil debt matter, not a conviction.

Has said on the record, including in his memoir, that his stepfather was physically abusive toward him, his mother, and his sisters, and that the resulting instability landed him in foster care twice as a child.

His own on-record account, via his memoir and interviews. The stepfather is named in the sequestered field but not here.

U.S. Navy, hospital corpsman, stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, for about four years; discharged in 1974. Did not fund a degree.

Working-class Black neighborhoods in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

not established

One 2005 profile states he was born in Louisiana and that his family's car broke down in Milwaukee en route to Canada before he turned one, which is where they settled. That conflicts with the more commonly cited record of Milwaukee as his birthplace. Single-sourced; not used to set the coded value.

No named sponsor into finance. A stranger driving a red Ferrari outside San Francisco General Hospital told him, in passing, that he was a stockbroker, and that one exchange set the goal.

Dean Witter Reynolds' San Francisco broker-trainee program, followed by about three years at Bear Stearns before he founded his own firm.

Credibility, Skill

The training program supplied the Series 7 license and Wall Street credibility; it did not supply capital, and it paid barely enough to live on.

Cold applications with no introduction. It took about ten months of repeatedly showing up before Dean Witter gave him a trainee slot.

28

Entered the Dean Witter trainee program in 1982; born 1954.

2

Dean Witter Reynolds, then Bear Stearns, before founding his own firm.

No college degree. Passed the Series 7 general securities exam in 1982, on the first try.

Series 7 general securities representative license, earned 1982.

An employer-run trainee program substituted for a college pipeline into finance.

$10,000 to start Gardner Rich & Co. in 1987, from his own savings as a broker.

It paid its own way from the start. Revenue came before any outside money.

An institutional brokerage earning commissions on client trades from the start.

The founding capital came from his own broker income at Dean Witter and Bear Stearns, not from investors.

Built on commissions with no outside venture funding at founding. A 2006 profile, published the same year he sold a stake, describes him as owning 75% with the rest held by a hedge fund; a separate account describes the 2006 sale itself as a "minority stake." The exact timing and structure of the hedge fund's position isn't established.

Sources conflict on the precise ownership split around the 2006 sale; both are cited rather than resolved.

Sold his stake in Gardner Rich in 2006, in a deal reported in the multimillions, and used the proceeds and the attention from the memoir and film to found Christopher Gardner International Holdings rather than stepping back.

Personal exposure rather than a researched market gap. A stranger's answer to "what do you do for a living" set the goal, and the firm grew directly out of his own brokerage career.

0

No prior ventures documented before Gardner Rich.

Himself. He kept working through the year of homelessness with no family or investor backstop absorbing any of it.

About a year of income insecurity on roughly $1,000 a month before the Dean Witter job converted into a stable full income.

33

Founded Gardner Rich in 1987, born 1954. The hardness peak came earlier, at 28, during the homeless year while a Dean Witter trainee.

Chicago. Most accounts place the 1987 founding there directly out of his broker career; one 2005 account has him working in New York for Bear Stearns first and dates the Chicago founding to 1989. The 1987 Chicago account is the more widely repeated one.

Founding-date discrepancy (1987 vs. 1989) not resolved across sources.

Built. Founded Gardner Rich from a single desk in his own apartment rather than acquiring an existing brokerage.

19

Ran Gardner Rich from founding in 1987 to the 2006 sale of his stake.

Institutional brokerage and finance

70000000

Aggregator estimate with no disclosed methodology or as-of date. Band only; not comparable to filing-based figures.

Aggregator

not established

The aggregator doesn't disclose an as-of year for its estimate.

Realized at least in part. He sold his stake in Gardner Rich for cash in a 2006 deal reported in the multimillions, rather than holding it indefinitely.

Wealth in an owned brokerage stake and, after 2006, a privately held holding company built on the memoir and film. No large disclosed salary anywhere in the record.

His 2006 memoir and the Will Smith film built on it, which grossed over $300 million worldwide, made him broadly known and launched a motivational-speaking and media career.

5

From entering Dean Witter's trainee program in 1982 to founding Gardner Rich in 1987.

Uncapped

Persistent, Self made, Resilient, a natural pitchman

Public

After

The public reputation formed after the 2002-03 news coverage, roughly two decades into his career.

Asset

The reputation was deliberately built, through books, press, and PR.

By 2006 he had a literary agent, a publicist, a speaking agency, and a company formed specifically to build "Chris Gardner" as a brand.

"The Pursuit of Happyness" was made with his direct involvement; he's credited as an associate producer and met with Will Smith to be studied for the role, so the film reflects a story he helped shape rather than one told about him without his input.