Anthony Joel Rucker was born to Keith and Joetta on November 8, 1998. He grew up, primarily, in homeless shelters while moving back and forth between his divorced mother and father. However, he didn’t allow this to stop him. His mother was a huge believer of Christ and she instilled in him the heart of a champion who would serve God.

Anthony, being the youngest of five children, learned early how to avoid the mistakes of those who came before him. His oldest brother, Geno, who had many rough patches in his life, dropped out of high school when he was seventeen. After much enlightenment and prayer, he later got his life back on track to obtain his GED which propelled him to receive his Bachelor’s degree and his MBA. Geno served as a huge motivator and mentor to Anthony. He strongly encouraged one very important principle that carried Anthony through his elementary, middle, and high school years which was to “practice outside of practice.”

With Anthony being a partaker of many school activities and an active member of the classroom, he never felt like that what he learned in school was ever enough. He taught himself many things outside of the classroom to alleviate his fear of mediocrity.

He participated in many of his school’s extracurricular and co-curricular activities that included his school’s basketball team, peer jury, debate team, and National Honor Society. He is also very active in community service activities around his school and in his community where he’s accumulated over 90 service-learning hours. To date, He has worked four internships (to date) in finance, sales, and marketing at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BMO Harris Bank, The Chi Teen Lit Fest, and Salesforce.

While Anthony had continued success throughout high school, he still kept his eyes on the mission that he set out for himself which is to be a leader by creating other leaders. In striving for such a mark, he is constantly reminded that he needs to continue bettering himself so that he can help better others.