Wes Moore | BridgeEDU

The Road Not Taken

Wes Moore wasn’t born a troublemaker. But it didn’t take long for him to become one.

“I was on academic and disciplinary probation by the time I was 8, 9 years old… and when I was 11 was the first time I felt handcuffs on my wrists.”

Realizing where her only son was headed, Wes’s mother took a bold and expensive step.  She enrolled him in a military school that would ultimately save him and set him on a path he never could have imagined. 

The boy in handcuffs who ran away from that school 5 times, would go on to become a Rhodes scholar studying at Oxford, a bestselling author…and a champion of other children growing up in fear like him. 

“I had felt the possibility of death, tickling my neck like the blade of a guillotine, as long as I could remember… I feared that one day I’d be the one running from the gun—or holding it.”

Wes’s journey from the dangerous streets to immense success became the subject of his bestselling book The Other Wes Moore, a chronicle of his childhood journey, which put him in the media spotlight and led him to found BridgeEdU.   

BridgeEdU is an innovative educational experience with a mission to help young people succeed and make the right choices through education and awareness, supported by parents, teachers, and mentors. 

Wes says he once thought people were the products of their environment, but now understands that people are the products of their expectations, and the expectations others have of them.

““I honestly think that the most dangerous gap we have in our society is the expectation gap…What we envision, and how hard we're willing to work at it, can really make all the difference as to where we end up."

BridgeEdU reinvents the freshman year of college in a way that engages students in real-world internships and service-learning opportunities, in addition to mentoring in core academic classes, like math, writing and communications.  

In his second book, The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters, just released this month, Wes picks up his own story and those of others who have gone in search of a life that matters.

“When you find that, you will find your greatest joy, and you’ll find your point in being here in the first place.”

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