How do childhood adversity, social class, and elite institutions shape the trajectory of an individual’s life? Growing up in foster care, enlisting in the U.S. Air Force, and later attending Yale and earning a Ph.D. at Cambridge University, Rob Henderson has lived a life that defies expectations. His bestselling memoir Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class explores these questions through the lens of his own remarkable journey. In a moderated conversation with Jon Shields, professor of government and chair of the government department at CMC, Henderson will examine the structural and cultural forces that influence social mobility, the role of family instability in shaping life outcomes, and his concept of “luxury beliefs”—status-signaling ideas embraced by the privileged that often impose real costs on those with fewer resources.