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Wes Moore

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Wes Moore (October 15, 1978) is a youth advocate, Army combat veteran, promising business leader and author. His first book, The Other Wes Moore, will be published by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House, in late April 2010. He is well known for sharing the same name of a criminal, who happened to be from the same Maryland neighborhood.

Biography

Early life and education

Born in Maryland in 1978, Wes Moore was three years old when his father died in front of him. His mother, hoping for a better future for her family, made great sacrifices to send Wes and his sisters to private school. When Wes continued to fail in school, she sent him to military school in Pennsylvania. After trying to escape four times in 5 days, Wes finally decided to become accountable for his actions. By graduation, he was company commander and class president. Wes has also become the top student out of 750 students.

Wes graduated Phi Theta Kappa from Valley Forge Military College in 1998 and Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins University in 2001 and a Brother of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity (Sigma Sigma Chapter). He completed an MLitt in International Relations from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 2004.[1]

Career

Wes was a paratrooper and Captain in the United States Army, serving a combat tour of duty in Afghanistan with the elite 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division in 2005-2006. He spearheaded the American strategic support plan for the Afghan Reconciliation Program and is recognized as an authority on the rise and ramifications of radical Islamism in the Western Hemisphere. A White House Fellow from 2006-2007, Moore served as a Special Assistant to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.[2] Wes then joined Citigroup in New York, focusing on global technology and alternative investments.

In 2000, as Wes was preparing to leave for England on his Rhodes Scholarship, he learned of another young man named Wes Moore who was just two years older, lived in the same neighborhood, and was heading to prison for life for the murder of an off-duty Baltimore police officer. Wes was shaken, wondering how he and his namesake could have such different fates. He wrote to the other Wes Moore, and much to his surprise, received a letter back. Through visits with him in prison, and conversations with his family and friends, he discovered startling parallels between their lives. Yet at similar moments of decision, they would head down different paths towards astonishingly divergent destinies. Wes realized this was a much larger story about the consequences of personal responsibility and the imperative of education and community for a generation of boys.

Wes serves on the board of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA)[3], the Johns Hopkins University Board of Trustees, the Valley Forge Military Academy and College Board of Trustees, and the Phi Theta Kappa Foundation Board of Trustees[4]. He also founded STAND! through Johns Hopkins, which works with Baltimore youth involved in the criminal justice system.[5] Wes was a featured speaker at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver[6] and has appeared in such media outlets as People Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CSPAN, and MSNBC, amongst others.

Published works

  • The Other Wes Moore: One Name and Two Fates—A Story of Tragedy and Hope (Spiegel & Grau/Random House, 2010)

Awards and honors

  • 2007: named to “Top 30 Leaders Under 30”, Ebony magazine
  • 2009: named to “40 Under 40 Rising Stars”, Crain's New York Business [7]
  • 2010: starred review, Publishers Weekly[8]

References

  1. ^ 40 Under 40 - Crain's New York Business Rising Stars 2009
  2. ^ Arts and Sciences Magazine Online.
  3. ^ IAVA Action
  4. ^ Phi Theta Kappa Foundation Contacts
  5. ^ BMoreNews
  6. ^ Denver Post Aug 2008
  7. ^ "Wes Moore - 2009 40 Under 40 - Crain's New York Business Rising Stars". Crain's New York Business.
  8. ^ "Nonfiction Book Reviews: 3/8/2010". Publishers Weekly. 2010-03-08. Retrieved 2010-03-14. Moore writes with subtlety and insight about the plight of ghetto youth, viewing it from inside and out; he probes beneath the pathologies to reveal the pressures—poverty, a lack of prospects, the need to respond to violence with greater violence—that propelled the other Wes to his doom. The result is a moving exploration of roads not taken.
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