Chris Gardner

Male

Black

African American

Descendant

not established

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

28

2

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

19

Institutional brokerage and finance

70000000

Aggregator

not established

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

Uncapped

Persistent, Self made, Resilient, a natural pitchman

Public

After

Asset

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

"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.