BIOGRAPHY

Casey Gerald is the author of There Will Be No Miracles Here, a memoir that stands the America Dream narrative on its head, while straddling the complex intersection of race, class,  religion and sexuality. TWBNMH was named a Best Book of 2018 by NPR and The New York Times, among others. It received starred reviews from Kirkus, Shelf Awareness, and Booklist, and was the December 2018 pick for the PBS NewsHour-New York Times Book Club. The book was a finalist for the LAMBDA Literary Award, a longlist selection for the Carnegie Medal for excellence in Nonfiction, and was described by novelist Marlon James as “the most urgently political, most deeply personal, and most engagingly spiritual statement of our time.” 

Casey's acclaimed essays include “The Black Art of Escape: A New Vision for Black Americans” in New York Magazine, which reflects on the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans’ arrival in Virginia, in 1619. It frames (and re-frames) that event and the history since, and articulates a new vision for black Americans in the 21st century. The essay was featured on CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, Amanpour & Company, and MSNBC's Morning Joe, and was selected by Longform as one of the best essays of 2019. Casey performed a piece based on The Black Art of Escape at the 2019 Pyer Moss Fall Show at New York Fashion Week. His 2021 Texas Monthly cover story on singer Leon Bridges—"Leon Bridges After Dark"—won the 2022 National City & Regional Magazine Award.

Prior to his writing career, Casey co-founded and served as CEO of MBAs Across America (MBAx), a national movement of business students and entrepreneurs working together to revitalize communities. Over three years, MBAs Across America sent 68 MBAs on road trips, traveling 40,000 miles across the country to partner with 73 mission-driven entrepreneurs. This work was chronicled on the TV series, Growing America: A Journey to Success. Casey and the MBAx team turned their program into an open-source model, and helped design a curriculum that lived on at Harvard Business School.

Casey's two TED Talks have been viewed over 4 million times, and he opened for President Barack Obama at SXSW in 2016. He has given talks at events and institutions across the country and around the world, including the Library of Congress, Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Business of Fashion's VOICES conference, the Creative Mornings Global Summit, the University of Iowa, and many others. He has been featured in The New York Times, the Financial Times, Italian Vogue and on the cover of Fast Company, which named him one of the "Most Creative People in Business."

A native of Oak Cliff, Texas, Casey attended Dallas Public Schools before college at Yale, where he played varsity football and co-founded the Yale Black Men's Union. He later received an MBA from Harvard Business School. Casey is a Senior Fellow of Humanity in Action, a Presidential Leadership Scholars Fellow, and a former Aspen Words Writer-in-Residence. He serves on the board of Kickstarter, PBC. 

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