Chris Gardner

Chris Gardner is an entrepreneur, international best-selling author, and one of the most sought-after motivational speakers in the world — the real man portrayed by Will Smith in the 2006 film The Pursuit of Happyness. Born in Milwaukee in 1954, Gardner spent nearly a year homeless in San Francisco while raising his toddler son alone, sleeping in offices, flophouses, and a train-station restroom as he trained, unpaid, to become a stockbroker.

He climbed out of that year to build a Wall Street career at firms including Dean Witter Reynolds and Bear Stearns, and in 1987 he founded his own brokerage firm, Gardner Rich & Co, in Chicago — starting with ten thousand dollars and a wooden desk. He later sold his stake in a multimillion-dollar transaction and established Christopher Gardner International Holdings, with offices in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.

Gardner's memoir, The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), became a number-one New York Times best-seller translated into more than forty languages and the basis for the film, which grossed over $300 million worldwide and earned Will Smith Academy Award, Golden Globe, and SAG nominations. He followed it with Start Where You Are (2009) and Permission to Dream (2021). Along the way he was named Father of the Year by the National Fatherhood Initiative, launched a $50 million low-income housing initiative in San Francisco, and runs the Christopher P. Gardner Foundation.

Today Gardner describes himself as a "67-year-old start-up," with fintech interests, seats on corporate boards, and an honorary role as the oldest recruit in U.S. Navy history, where he supports recruiting and retention. On stage, he remains one of the most powerful voices on entrepreneurship, resilience, and reinvention — living proof that where you start does not have to be where you finish.