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Chris Young

Biography

Chris Young

Chris Young is a consultant, author and public speaker. Raised in Clarksville, Tennessee, he came of age in a community shaped by severe poverty, instability and limited opportunity. Sentenced to life in prison under outdated federal drug laws, Chris spent more than a decade incarcerated. In 2021, he was granted executive clemency. Since his release, Chris has earned a degree in economics and public policy from Southern Methodist University and founded Coherence Consulting, a firm that uses data, policy analysis and lived experience to reimagine how institutions invest in human potential. He lives in Dallas, Texas.

Chris Young

Books by Chris Young

The Wound Is Where the Light Enters: A Memoir of Resilience
by Chris Young - Memoir, Nonfiction

If our world were more just, Chris Young would have been crossing a stage at college graduation at the age of 22. Instead, he was marched into a maximum-security federal prison, facing life under mandatory drug sentencing laws. Like far too many young Black men from his neighborhood in Clarksville, Tennessee, this was where his story was supposed to end. But one day in the prison library, a book caught his eye: an encyclopedia. As he began to turn the pages, Chris felt himself transported. He began to confront the nihilism around him, the trauma of his past, and the cruelty of a system determined to confine him. At his sentencing hearing, Chris gave such a moving speech that the judge resigned from his lifetime appointment to the bench and fought to free him.