Voices of Vision 2024

Description

PERMISSION TO DREAM

with Chris Gardner
The true story behind major motion picture The Pursuit of Happyness.

I am an entrepreneur, single parent and author of The Pursuit of Happyness. That book was the story of my life, but I've always thought of it as the book of 'us,' meaning everyone who had every opportunity to quit, but didn't.

We all have the power of choice.

Having survived all of the cycles that could and should have crashed me, and crashed many others, I found myself once again challenged in the early '80s when I became a working homeless veteran with a toddler son. This is when I made the two most important decisions I've ever made in my life, and I was about to be tested to the nth degree.

It was then I decided that my children would always know who their father was. I consciously chose to break every typical cycle that I was born into: child abandonment, child abuse, alcoholism, domestic violence, fear, poverty and illiteracy. My second decision was that I would become world-class in whatever I did in my life. This led me to a nearly 40-year career on Wall Street, and I wouldn't trade a single day of it for anything in the world.

Those two decisions led me to a new question I recently had to answer: "What are you doing with the rest of your life? Do you retire or REWIRE?"

I'll see you on April 18, where we will give ourselves Permission to Dream, make the life-changing decisions we need to make, and REWIRE.

If I can do this, then you can do that.

 Premier Sponsor

SPECIAL SCREENING OPPORTUNITY
SEE THE FILM AT MARCUS THEATRES | APRIL 10-18

 

To celebrate Chris Gardner's visit to FMWF this April, our partners at Marcus Theatres are offering special screenings of The Pursuit of Happyness to Chamber and community members at a highly discounted rate.

Ticket cost: $5
Theatre: Century Cinema, 3931 9th Avenue SW, Fargo | DreamLounger seating
Dates available: April 11 to April 18
See available showtimes and purchase your ticket

 

- Chris Gardner's memoir, a New York Times and Washington Post #1 Bestseller
- Critically acclaimed and award-winning 2006 film featuring Will Smith

The Pursuit of Happyness
At the age of twenty, Milwaukee native Chris Gardner, just out of the Navy, arrived in San Francisco to pursue a promising career in medicine. Considered a prodigy in scientific research, he surprised everyone and himself by setting his sights on the competitive world of high finance. Yet no sooner had he landed an entry-level position at a prestigious firm than Gardner found himself caught in a web of incredibly challenging circumstances that left him as part of the city's working homeless and with a toddler son. Motivated by the promise he made to himself as a fatherless child to never abandon his own children, the two spent almost a year moving among shelters, "HO-tels," soup lines, and even sleeping in the public restroom of a subway station.

Never giving in to despair, Gardner made an astonishing transformation from being part of the city's invisible poor to being a powerful player in its financial district.

More than a memoir of Gardner's financial success, this is the story of a man who breaks his own family's cycle of men abandoning their children. Mythic, triumphant, and unstintingly honest, The Pursuit of Happyness conjures heroes like Horatio Alger and Antwone Fisher, and appeals to the very essence of the American Dream.

Permission to Dream
On a winter's day, Chris Gardner set off with his nine-year-old granddaughter Brooke to find the harmonica of her dreams. The search sends them North beyond the wall into a foreboding Chicago neighborhood and, soon, on a harrowing adventure that will change both of their lives?and ours.

Chris is still mourning the loss of his girlfriend to brain cancer. Her question haunts him: "Now that we know how short life can be, what will you do with the time you have left?" After five years, he feels an urgency of what he calls, 'Atomic Time' in which every second counts to find an answer, but is stuck. Even while giving Brooke permission to aspire to one day become President of the United States, he knows it's time to reclaim his own permission to dream.

Lost, Chris and his granddaughter board a bus, reminding him of earlier rides through dark times when dreams of a better life kept him alive. As the two wind through a changing cityscape, Chris reflects on past lessons that offer powerful guidance for dreaming your way to monumental success. 

At its heart, this book lays out a blueprint for building a dream-come-true life even during uncertainty. Gardner delivers the secrets to achieving a prosperous career from a method for identifying your ultimate dream to a playbook for becoming world class at it.  His tools include the new 3 Rs, or the Rep, the Rap and the Rolodex, which reveal how to earn a stellar reputation, develop a rap for marketing yourself, and amass a Rolodex of rewarding relationships. No matter how much wealth you achieve, Chris notes, true success comes from enriching the lives of others, so all can still have access to the American Dream. 

Toward the end, Brooke observes that in Atomic Time it's never too late for anyone to reinvent themselves and change their fortune. Chris, hearing her, realizes what his next pursuit will be - to go back to high school and give permission to dream to the next generation of problem solvers and change makers. 

Past Voices of Vision presenters include: 

• 2023: Marcus Luttrell
• 2022: Mike Rowe
• 2021: Admiral William McRaven
• 2019: Peyton Manning
• 2018: Danica Patrick
• 2017: Shaquille O'Neal
• 2016: Robert O'Neil
• 2015: Rudy Giuliani
• 2014: Terry Bradshaw 
• 2013: Jeb Bush
• 2012: Joe Theismann
• 2011: Bob Woodward
• 2010: Lt. Col. Oliver North

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AdShark Marketing | Advanced Business Methods
AgCountry Farm Credit Services | American Federal Bank | Bank of North Dakota
Bethany Retirement Living | Bobcat Company | Border Bank
Building Industry Association of the Red River Valley | Cardinal IG | Cargill
Cass County Electric Cooperative | Cornerstone Bank | D-S Beverages, Inc.
Dacotah Bank | EagleRidge Development | Eide Bailly LLP | First Western Bank & Trust
Fluid Interiors | Heartland Trust Company | Hebron Brick Supply | High Point Networks
KAJ Hospitality | Light Consulting | Marsh McLennan Agency | Mengedoth Dental
Microsoft | Midco | Minnesota State Community & Technical College | Moore Engineering, Inc.
Mortenson | North Dakota State College of Science | Razor Consulting Solutions, Inc.
Red River Commodities, Inc. | ROERS | Starion Bank | Titan Machinery
Town & Country Credit Union | Western State Bank

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