Chris Gardner

Biography

Christopher Paul Gardner (born February 9, 1954) is an American businessman and motivational speaker. During the early 1980s, Gardner struggled with homelessness while raising a toddler son. 

He became a stockbroker and eventually founded his own brokerage firm Gardner Rich & Co in 1987. In 2006, Gardner sold his minority stake in the firm and published a memoir. That book was made into the motion picture The Pursuit of Happyness starring Will Smith.

Gardner was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on February 9, 1954, to Thomas Turner and Bettye Jean Gardner. He was the second child and the only boy born to Bettye Jean. His older half-sister, Ophelia, is from a previous union. His younger sisters, Sharon and Kimberly, are children from his mother's marriage to Freddie Triplett.

Gardner did not have many positive male role models as a child, as his father was living in Louisiana during his birth, and his stepfather was physically abusive to both his mother and his sisters. 

Triplett's fits of rage made both Gardner and his sisters constantly afraid. In one incident, Bettye Jean was imprisoned when Triplett falsely reported her to the authorities for welfare fraud; the children were placed in foster care. 

When Gardner was eight years old, he and his sisters returned to foster care for the second time when their mother, unbeknownst to them, was convicted of trying to kill Triplett by burning down the house while he was inside.

In 1987, Gardner established the brokerage firm, Gardner Rich & Co, in Chicago, Illinois, an “institutional brokerage firm specializing in the execution of debt, equity, and derivative products transactions for some of the nation's largest institutions, public pension plans, and unions.” 

His new company was started in his small Presidential Towers apartment, with start-up capital of $10,000 and a single piece of furniture: a wooden desk that doubled as the family dinner table.

 The "Rich" in the name was in honor of commodities trader Marc Rich, who had no connection to the company and whom Gardner had never met, but whom Gardner considered “one of the most successful futures traders in the world.”