Wes Moore

Wes Moore was born to Westley and Joy Moore, with one older half-sister, Nikki, and a younger sister, Shani. When he was three years old, he witnessed his father’s sudden and unexpected death from acute epiglottis. After his father’s death, Joy and the children moved in with her parents, Jamaican and Cuban immigrants who owned a house in the Bronx. While living in the Bronx, Moore attended the prestigious Riverdale County Day School. However, he was a poor student with a bad record of attendance, which eventually led to his mother withdrawing him from Riverdale and sending him to Valley Forge Military Academy. Moore graduated from Valley Forge’s junior college with an associate’s degree, before enrolling at Johns Hopkins University. He graduated from Johns Hopkins Phi Betta Kappa and was the first Rhodes Scholar in the university’s history. After completing a master’s degree in international relations at Oxford, Moore worked at Deutsche Bank on Wall Street and in London, served as a paratrooper in Afghanistan, and was an assistant to secretary of state Condoleezza Rice through the White House Fellows Program. He then left DC to work for Citigroup in New York. Moore’s first book, The Other Wes Moore, became a bestseller; following its publication, Moore wrote a young adult version entitled Discovering Wes Moore, two other young adult novels, and a memoir entitled The Work: Searching for a Life that Matters. Moore has also worked as a TV producer on programs such as Coming Back with Wes Moore and All the Difference. He has written for a variety of news publications and appeared on political programs ranging from Morning Joe to The Daily Show to Real Time with Bill Maher. Moore has spoken widely about the issue of veterans and has worked alongside several veteran advocacy groups. He is married to Dawn Moore, and the couple have a son and a daughter.