Anand Giridharadas
Editor-at-large for TIME and author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World
Casey Gerald
Author of There Will Be No Miracles Here
After a Yale football scholarship jumpstarted Casey Gerald’s educational career, he spent the next decade achieving countless hallmarks of success, from graduating from Harvard Business School and starting an acclaimed non-profit to having dinner with a former president and speaking at TED. But he soon discovered that there was a dark side to living out the narrative of the American Dream. His memoir, There Will Be No Miracles Here, chronicles his reckoning with our nation’s most cherished myths. In his electrifying speeches, he turns preconceived beliefs upside down and inspires audiences to question the meaning of success.
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About Casey Gerald
Casey Gerald was the poster child for the American Dream, escaping a harrowing childhood to enter a new world of elite universities and secret societies. But as he climbed the social ladder, he saw how this hierarchy stifled those at the margins, and that “salvation stories” like his could be used to keep others from rising. Now, he uses his platform to splinter the myth of the American Dream, illuminate inequality, and set forth a bold new direction for a generation navigating a fractured nation.
In his talks, Gerald shares his powerful coming-of-age story, one that straddles the complex intersection of race, class, religion, queer sexuality, and masculinity. He explores the essential questions of our current moment: how do we succeed in a culture that is designed to silence us? How do we heal from trauma while retaining our identity? His talks are as a testament that every person deserves to define and hold on to their humanity, especially during times of collective anger and growing disillusionment.
Gerald’s new book, There Will Be No Miracles Here, is a meditative memoir turned incisive manifesto. In his singular coming-of-age story, he shares his journey on the rise to success, his disenchantment with society’s definition of achievement, and his painful realization of how his own ascension fits into a larger scheme. Instead of becoming complicit in the American narrative that narrows lives down to stereotypes of success and failure, he suggests how we might build a new foundation to sustain the richness of our differences.
A native Texan, Gerald attended Yale University and Harvard Business School, where he delivered a stirring pre-commencement speech urging his classmates to value purpose over profit. He started an acclaimed non-profit, MBAs Across America, after beginning his career in economic policy and strategy. An electrifying speaker, Gerald’s TED talk on the “Gospel of Doubt” has received over 1.8 million views, and he opened for President Barack Obama at SXSW. He has been featured on MSNBC, in The New York Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, and on the cover of Fast Company, which named him one of the “Most Creative People in Business.”
Visit Casey Gerald’s Company Reads page to discover how to bring his bold lectures to your organization.
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Speaking Topics
There Will Be No Miracles Here
Casey Gerald’s story has the arc of a classic rags-to-riches tale, but he soon discovered there was a steep cost to his success. “If to live as we are is destroying us,” he asks, “what would it mean to truly live?” In this talk, Gerald turns the American Dream narrative on its head, inspiring audiences to question–even shatter–and reimagine this nation’s most cherished myths.
Categories: Business + Management Speakers, College + University Speakers, Company Reads Speakers, Current + Social Issues Speakers, Diversity + Inclusion Speakers, Education Speakers, Entrepreneurship Speakers, First-Year Experience Speakers, Innovation + Creativity Speakers, Motivational + Inspirational Speakers, TED Talks Speakers -
Video
BookTV: “There Will Be No Miracles Here”
https://www.c-span.org/video/?445645-2/there-miracles&start=136
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Praise for Casey Gerald
His talk ROCKED THE HOUSE and the whole team. He hit it out of the ball park. What a true inspiration and intellect. His thoughts on how to communicate complicated stories in a new way really resonated. It was such a gift to meet him and to hear him.
— Truth Initiative, Perry Pidgeon HooksPraise for There Will Be No Miracles Here
Hardly a by-the-numbers memoir, this is a powerful book marked by the author’s refreshingly complicated and insightful storytelling.
— Kirkus Reviews (starred)From the first line of this astonishing book, we know we are in for a trip we’ve never gone on before in memoir. The book braids, un-braids and re-braids threads of the personal, the political and the philosophical, in a voice that is ironically comedic and at the same time wholly sincere. There Will Be No Miracles Here is a glowing literary event.
— Kiese LaymonCasey Gerald’s book is urgent, mesmeric, soaring, desperately serious, wounded and, at times, slyly, brilliantly comic. The world he creates is vivid, the invocation of the personal and the political sharp and knowing. The style is flawless, the pace perfectly judged. Electrifying.
— Colm TóibínThis is the book for all of us who have juggled double (and triple, and quadruple) consciousnesses, and for those of us who have prayed to false gods and passed as false selves. Casey Gerald leads us through blackness and boyhood, love and masculinity, faith and privilege, on his journey toward the only self who could write these fierce and luminous pages. This book is fire.
— Danzy Senna -
Books by Casey Gerald
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Media About Casey Gerald
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Featured Title
There Will Be No Miracles Here
“Somehow Casey Gerald has pulled off the most urgently political, most deeply personal, and most engagingly spiritual statement of our time by just looking outside his window and inside himself. Extraordinary.” –Marlon James
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