Les Brown

Les Brown was born on the floor of an abandoned building in Miami and given up for adoption as an infant. Labeled "educable mentally retarded" in grade school, he built a speaking career on the argument that someone else's assessment of your ceiling is not information about your ceiling.

Before speaking full time he worked as a radio DJ, then served three terms in the Ohio House of Representatives. He went on to host The Les Brown Show and became one of the most recognized motivational speakers in the United States.

He is the author of Live Your Dreams and It's Not Over Until You Win, and has spent decades in front of corporate, education, and community audiences. His delivery owes more to the pulpit than the lectern.

Brown was born in an abandoned building in Miami and adopted, and was labeled educable mentally retarded as a schoolchild, a designation a teacher later challenged directly. He went on to serve three terms in the Ohio House of Representatives and to build a broadcasting career, and both of those chapters sit underneath the material rather than beside it.

He is one of the speakers who effectively defined the modern motivational category, and received the Toastmasters International Golden Gavel. Events book him when the objective is to move a room emotionally rather than to teach it a model, which makes him a natural closing keynote and a poor choice for a session that needs takeaways attached.