Who He Is
Andre Norman
Speaker, author, and resilience educator. Known as the Ambassador of Hope.
At eighteen he was sentenced to more than a hundred years. He spent the early part of it becoming the most dangerous man he could be, and by his own account he was winning at a game worth nothing. In solitary confinement he sat with a metal mirror and asked what was actually in his way, and then went to work on the answer one line at a time.
He taught himself the law in the prison library, reversed his own case on appeal, and walked out in 1999 after fourteen years. He has spent the 26 years since teaching what he did, in boardrooms, prisons, housing projects and governments in more than twenty-five countries. Harvard gave him a fellowship. His work in Ferguson is part of why.
The prison I was in hired me and gave me keys.
- Sentenced
- More than 100 years, at eighteen
- Served
- 14 years, including solitary confinement
- Released
- 1999, after winning his own appeal
- Harvard
- Research fellow, Harvard Law School
- Worked in
- More than 25 countries
- Founded
- The Academy of Hope
What He Teaches
Resilience is not a personality trait. It is a method.
That is the whole argument, and it is the reason he can teach it. A trait you either have or you do not. A method has steps, and steps can be handed to somebody else. His has seven: name the mountain, build the list, climb in the dark, find the people who have actually done it, survive falling, survive the summit, then go back down for the next person.
This is not a belief thing. This is an executable work thing.
He teaches the method here in seven recorded sessions, and works directly with a small number of people each quarter. Both are on the enrolment page. To book him for a stage or a boardroom instead, his speaking site is the place for that.
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