Award-winning actor, best-selling author and philanthropist Hill Harper is empowering young people to manifest their destiny through mentoring, scholarship and grant programs.

His Manifest Your Destiny Foundation and Summer Empowerment Academy are inspiring underserved youth to complete high school and enroll in college—overcoming the odds that nearly 80 percent of African-American male eighth grade students, with a 2.8 or below grade-point average, will drop out of high school.

In a special campus convocation April 2, Harper will pass along lessons he has learned from his involvement in the CNN Heroes program, which features everyday people like mentors and educators doing extraordinary things. He served on the panel that selects the annual award winners.

Harper also will discuss deep-rooted cultural beliefs that are preventing people from achieving their potential, and ways to move past these barriers.

The talk will be from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in Hatfield Hall. It is being sponsored by Rose-Hulman’s Center for Diversity. The event is free and open to the public. However, advanced reservations are necessary.

Harper has earned seven NAACP Image Awards for his writing and acting. He was a member of the cast of the CBS television series "CSI: NY" for its nine seasons, currently appears on ABC’s “The Good Doctor” series and has hosted HLN’s series “How It Really Happened with Hill Harper.” He also performed in the movies “All Eyez on Me,” a 2017 biopic of rapper and activist Tupac Shakur, and the award-winning “Concussion,” a 2015 film about a forensic pathologist who uncovers the truth about brain damage in football players who suffer repeated concussions.

His New York Times best-selling books include “Letters to a Young Brother,” named “Best Book for Young Adults” by the American Library Association in 2007, “Letters to a Young Sister,” and “The Conversation.” Harper also has written “Letters to an Incarcerated Brother” and “The Wealth Cure: Putting Money in its Place.”

Harper has also been a job creator for minorities and youths through his The Architect & Co., a health and wellness company that has created a skin care line for people of color; a Roasting Plant Coffee shop in Detroit; and a hotel in New Orleans. He has a law degree from Harvard University Law School, a master’s degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a bachelor’s degree from Brown University.