Wes Moore

Wes Moore is a youth advocate, Army combat veteran, promising business leader and author.

Moore graduated Phi Theta Kappa as a commissioned officer from Valley Forge Military College in 1998 and Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins University in 2001 with a bachelor’s degree in international relations. He completed an MLitt in international relations from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 2004.

Moore 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 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. Following his time at the White House, he became an investment professional in New York at Citigroup, focusing on global technology and alternative investments. In 2009 he was named one of Crain's New York Business' "40 Under 40 Rising Stars;" two years prior, he was selected as one of Ebony magazine's "Top 30 Leaders Under 30."

Born in 1978, Moore was three years old when his father, a respected radio and television host, died in front of him. His mother, hoping for a better future for her family, made great sacrifices to send Moore and his sisters to private school. Caught between two worlds—the affluence of his classmates and the struggles of his neighbors—he began to act out, succumbing to bad grades, suspensions, and delinquencies. Desperate to reverse his behavior, his mother sent him to military school in Pennsylvania. After trying to escape four times, Moore finally decided to stop railing against the system and become accountable for his actions. By graduation six years later, he was company commander overseeing 125 cadets.

On December 11, 2000, The Baltimore Sun ran an article about how Moore, despite his troubled childhood, had just received The Rhodes Scholarship. At the same time, The Sun was running stories—eventually more than 100 in all—about four African-American men who were arrested for the murder of an off-duty Baltimore police officer during an armed robbery. One of the men convicted was just two years older than Moore, lived in the same neighborhood, and in an uncanny turn, was also named Wes Moore.

He wondered how two young men from the same city, who were around the same age, and even shared a name, could arrive at two completely different destinies. The juxtaposition between their lives, and the questions it raised about accountability, chance, fate and family, had a profound impact on Moore and he decided to write to the other Wes Moore, much to his surprise, a month later he received a letter back. He visited the other Wes in prison over a dozen times, spoke with his family and friends, and discovered startling parallels between their lives: both had difficult childhoods, both were fatherless, and both had trouble in the classroom; they’d hung out on similar corners with similar crews, and had run into trouble with the police. Yet at each stage of their lives, at similar moments of decision, they would head down different paths towards astonishingly divergent destinies. Moore realized in their two stories was a much larger tale about the consequences of personal responsibility and the imperativeness of education and community for a generation of boys searching for their way. Inspired by his experience and findings, he penned The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, a memoir about his life and that of the other Wes Moore.