Mr. Rodney Walker, M.Ed.

Rodney Walker serves as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Leadership Studies in the Andrew Young Center for Global Leadership at Morehouse College. He has also served as an instructor in Atlanta’s Metro Reentry Facility as part of Morehouse’s Higher Education in Prisons Program. A Chicago native, he has a bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College and graduate degrees from Harvard and Yale University.

Given the obstacles placed before him as a foster child, Rodney struggled academically and socially in school. In his early years of elementary school, he was diagnosed with autism, placed in special education, repeated the fourth grade due to poor academic performance, and finished his freshman year of high school with a 1.5 GPA. Shortly after aging out of foster care in his junior year, he was homeless on the streets of Chicago, relying on his classmates’ parents and mentors for refuge.

Desperate to cope with these circumstances, Rodney joined a youth mentoring program in his senior year of high school, where he was able to address the adverse experiences that had restrained him. During this period, he also participated in an in-school youth entrepreneurship program for high school students. With the support and guidance of these programs and committed mentors, Rodney competed and won various business plan competitions. It was here that Rodney became motivated and inspired to start his first business.

He is the founder of Forever Life Productions, a company that creates custom videos for special occasions and events. Along with his production company, Rodney travels both nationally and internationally, speaking at public schools, corporations, and conferences about the importance of trauma-informed education, entrepreneurship education, mentoring at-risk youth, and corporate philanthropy for non-profit organizations aimed to uplift and support at-risk youth. Portions of his story have appeared on PBS’s American Graduate Day, in the national education documentary Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon, and in It’s Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired and Get Going by Chelsea Clinton. In an effort to address the epidemic of violence and social failure among at-risk youth in Chicago, Walker partnered with former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to create a comprehensive employment pipeline program for disconnected youth across the city.

Since joining the faculty at Morehouse College, Walker has sought to develop a comprehensive social justice campaign, aimed at creating educational opportunities and social change in America's criminal justice system. To this end, Walker volunteers at the US Federal Correctional Institution in Atlanta.

In 2020, Walker published his 2nd book; a professional development guide for educators, entitled Wounds You Can Not See: An Educator’s Guide to Cultivating Resilience and Leadership in At-Risk Youth.

To learn more about Walker’s journey or any of his courses, email at rodney.walker@morehouse.edu.