mgt301 Success Story of Chris Gardner

Success Story of Chris Gardner​

Gardner was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Thomas Turner and Bettye Jean Gardner. He was the second child born to Bettye Jean, his older half-sister is Ophelia from a previous union; and younger siblings are Sharon and Kimberly, 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 his wife and children. Triplett's rages made Gardner and his sisters constantly afraid. In one incident, Bettye Jean was imprisoned when Triplett 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 a second time when their mother, unbeknownst to them, was convicted of trying to kill Triplett by burning down the house while he was inside.
While in foster care, Gardner first became acquainted with his three maternal uncles: Archibald, Willie and Henry. Of the three, Henry had the most profound influence on him, entering Gardner's world at a time when he most needed a father figure. Tragically, Henry drowned in the Mississippi River when Chris was nine years old. The children learned that their mother had been imprisoned when she arrived at Henry's funeral escorted by a prison guard.
Despite her unhappy marriage and her periods of absence, Bettye Jean was a source of inspiration and strength to her son Chris. She encouraged Gardner to believe in himself and sowed the seeds of self-reliance in him. Gardner quotes her as saying, "You can only depend on yourself. The cavalry ain't coming." Gardner also determined from his early experiences that alcoholism, domestic abuse, child abuse, illiteracy, fear, and powerlessness were all things he wanted to avoid in the future.
The late 1960s and early 1970s was a time of political and musical awakening for Gardner. He developed a deep sense of black pride, as he became familiar with the works of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Eldridge Cleaver. His world view expanded beyond the African American experience; he learned of historical events such as the Sharpeville massacre, and as a result became increasingly aware of apartheid in South Africa and international racial issues. Gardner learned to play the trumpet and he enjoyed listening to music by Sly Stone, Buddy Miles, James Brown, and his all-time favorite, Miles Davis.
Inspired by his Uncle Henry's worldwide adventures in the United States Navy, Gardner decided to enlist when he finished secondary schooling. He was stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina for four years, where he was assigned as a corpsman. He became acquainted with a decorated San Francisco cardiac surgeon, Dr. Robert Ellis, who offered Gardner a position assisting him with innovative clinical research at the University of California Medical Center and Veterans Administration Hospital in San Francisco, California. Gardner accepted the position, and moved to San Francisco upon his discharge from the Navy in 1974. Over the course of two years, he learned how to manage a laboratory and to perform various surgical techniques. By 1976, he had full responsibilities in a laboratory and had co-authored with Dr. Ellis various articles published in medical journals.
On June 18, 1977, Chris Gardner married Sherry Dyson, a Virginia native and an educational expert in mathematics. With his knowledge, experience, and contacts within the medical field, it appeared Gardner had his medical career plans laid out before him. However, with ten years of medical training ahead of him and with the changes in health care just on the horizon, he realized that the medical profession would be vastly different by the time he could practice medicine. Gardner was advised to consider more lucrative career options; a few days before his 26th birthday, he informed his wife, Sherry, of his plans to abandon his dreams of becoming a doctor.
His relationship with Sherry was detached, in part because of his decision to abandon a medical career and also due to differences in their behavior. While still living with Sherry, he began an affair with a dental student named Jackie Medina, and she became pregnant with his child only a few months into the affair. After three years of marriage to Sherry, he left her to move in with Jackie and to prepare for fatherhood. Nine years elapsed before he and Sherry were legally divorced in 1986.
Their son, Christopher Medina Gardner, was born on January 28, 1981. Gardner worked as a research lab assistant at UCSF and at the Veterans Hospital after leaving the service. His assistant job only paid about $8,000 a year which was not enough for him to support a live-in girlfriend and a child. After four years, he quit these jobs and doubled his salary by taking a job as a medical equipment salesman.
Prompted by his son's inquiries about his own father, Gardner had previously been able to track down his biological father via telephone. With the higher income that he was earning at his new job, Gardner was able to save enough money to travel to Monroe, Louisiana, where he and his son met Turner for the first time.
Gardner returned to San Francisco determined to succeed at business. A pivotal moment in his life occurred, after a sales call to a San Francisco General Hospital, when he encountered an impeccably-dressed man in a red Ferrari. Curious, Gardner asked the man his career. The man told him he was a stock broker and, from that moment on, Gardner's career path was decided. Eventually, Gardner bought a Ferrari of his own from the famous basketball player, Michael Jordan. The Illinois license plate of Gardner's black Ferrari reads "NOT MJ".
The stockbroker in the red Ferrari was a man named Bob Bridges. He met with Gardner and gave him an introduction to the world of finance. Bridges organized meetings between Gardner and branch managers at the major stock brokerage firms that offered training programs—such as Merrill Lynch, Paine Webber, E.F. Hutton, Dean Witter Reynolds, and Smith Barney. For the following two months, Gardner canceled or postponed his sales appointments and his car amassed parking tickets while he met with managers.
It appeared that Gardner got his "break" when he was accepted into a training program at E.F. Hutton. He subsequently quit his sales job so that he could dedicate his time exclusively to training as a stock broker. Then he appeared at the office ready to work, only to discover that his hiring manager had been fired the week before. To make matters worse, Gardner's relationship with Jackie was falling apart. She accused him of beating her—an accusation that Gardner denies to this day—and left him, taking their son with her to the East Coast. He was taken to jail and a judge ordered that he stay there, for ten days, as punishment for being unable to pay $1,200 in parking tickets.
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Gardner returned home from jail to find his apartment empty. His girlfriend and his son, along with all of his possessions (including his suits, shoes and business apparel), had disappeared. With no experience, no college education, virtually no connections, and with the same casual outfit he had been wearing on the day he was taken into custody, Gardner gained a position in Dean Witter Reynolds’ stock brokerage training program. However, with a monthly stipend of $1,000 (which is equal to $2184 in present day value), and no savings, he was unable to meet his living expenses.
Gardner worked to become a top trainee at Dean Witter Reynolds. He arrived at the office early and stayed late each day, persistently making calls to prospective clients with his goal being 200 calls/day. His perseverance paid off when, in 1982, Gardner passed his licensing exam on the first try and became a full employee of the firm. Eventually, Gardner was recruited by Bear Stearns & Company in San Francisco.
About four months after Jackie disappeared with their son, she returned and left him with Gardner. By then, he was able to afford a small rent and was rooming in a flophouse. He willingly accepted sole custody of his child; however, the rooming house where he lived did not allow children. Although he was gainfully employed, Gardner and his son secretly struggled with homelessness while he saved money for a rental house in Berkeley, California.
Meanwhile, none of Gardner's coworkers knew that he and his son were homeless in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco for nearly a year. Gardner often scrambled to place his child in daycare, stood in soup lines and slept wherever he and his son could find safety—in his office after hours, at flophouses, at parks, and even in a locked bathroom at the Bay Area Rapid Transit station.
Concerned for Chris Jr.’s well-being, Gardner asked Reverend Cecil Williams to allow them to stay at the Glide Memorial United Methodist Church’s shelter for homeless women, now known as The Cecil Williams Glide Community House. The Reverend agreed without hesitation. Today, when asked what he remembers about being homeless, Christopher Gardner, Jr. recalls "I couldn't tell you that we were homeless, I just knew that we were always having to go. So, if anything, I remember us just moving, always moving."
In 1987, Chris 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. Gardner reportedly owns 75 percent of his stock brokerage firm with the rest owned by a hedge fund.[citation needed] He chose the name "Gardner Rich" for the company because he considers Marc Rich, the commodities trader pardoned by former president Bill Clinton in 2001, "one of the most successful futures traders in the world.
After Gardner sold his small stake in Gardner Rich in a multi-million dollar deal in 2006, he became CEO and founder of Christopher Gardner International Holdings, with offices in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. During a visit to South Africa to observe elections around the time of 10th anniversary of the end of apartheid, Gardner met with Nelson Mandela to discuss possible investment in South African emerging markets as indicated in his 2006 autobiography. Gardner is reportedly developing an investment venture with South Africa that will create hundreds of jobs and introduce millions in foreign currency into the nation. Gardner has declined to disclose details of the project citing securities laws.
When you first hear the Chris Gardner story, you might think you were hearing the storyline of a Hollywood movie. In fact, the Chris Gardner story was so real that it was turned into a movie, the recently released "The Pursuit of Happyness".
It is a story that tells of the help one can get from often the most unexpected sources. One such source included local Oakland prostitutes, who would start their shifts around the same time Gardner and his son returned home at night to their shelter. Night after night, these women noticed the man and his baby, with no woman in tow, and began giving him $5 bills. “If it were not for those ladies of the evening giving that child $5, there would be times I could not have fed him,” he recalls.
References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Gardner
http://www.evancarmichael.com/Famous-Entrepreneurs/815/Chris-Gardner-Story.html​

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