The sprawling housing project comes into view as I make the familiar left turn from Eleventh Avenue onto Sixty-First Street and climb uphill from Manhattan’s west side. Prologue: New York, 2010 Prologue NEW YORK, 2010

That offer set him on a better path, off the streets and eventually on the way to Georgetown Law, but not without hard knocks along the way.īut even as he racked up professional accomplishments, Jackson is still haunted by the unchanged world outside his office.įrom public housing to working for Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, and its founder, Bill Gates, to advising some of the biggest stars in music, Bruce Jackson’s Never Far from Home reveals the ups and downs of an incredible journey, how he overcame many obstacles and the valuable lessons learned along the way. Taken in by the criminal justice system, seduced by a burgeoning drug trade, and burdened by a fractured, impoverished home life, Jackson stood on the edge of failure. At the age of fifteen, he witnessed the homicide of his close friend. He kept his past hidden from sight as he ascended the corporate ladder but shares it in full for the first time here.īorn in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Jackson moved to Manhattan’s Amsterdam housing projects as a child, where he had already been falsely accused and arrested for robbery by the age of ten.

But few of his colleagues can understand the weight he carries with him to the office each day. For fans of Indra Nooyi’s My Life in Full and Viola Davis’s Finding Me.Īs an accomplished Microsoft executive, Bruce Jackson handles billions of dollars of commerce as its associate general counsel while he plays a crucial role in the company’s corporate diversity efforts.

Microsoft’s associate general counsel shares this story that is “as nuanced as it is hopeful” (Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Leader) about his rise from childhood poverty in pre-gentrified New York City to a stellar career at the top of the technology and music industries in this stirring true story of grit and perseverance.

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