Arno Michaelis

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Arno Michaelis was a founding member of a notorious worldwide racist skinhead organization, a reverend of a self-declared racial holy war, and frontman of the hate-metal band Centurion, which sold 20,000 CDs by the mid-nineties and is still popular with racists today.  Hate consumed seven years of Arno’s life, and during that time, he saw close friends murdered, and others incarcerated. Fueled by rage, Arno harmed innocent people, his family, and himself.

Single parenthood, love for his daughter, and the forgiveness shown by people he once hated all helped to turn Arno's life around, bringing him to embrace diversity and practice gratitude for all life. After spending over a decade as a successful information technology consultant and entrepreneur, Arno is now a speaker, author of My Life After Hate, and very fortunate to be able to share his ongoing process of character development with the world in an effort to counter the cycle of violence he once fueled. 

Since Arno went public with his story in 2010, he’s had the honor of speaking worldwide, to audiences from Abu Dhabi to Silicon Valley, at colleges and universities, and in churches, mosques, synagogues, Gurdwaras, and Buddhist centers. He’s spoken to employees at Google and Facebook, and thousands of students from public grade schools to Harvard University.  Arno has been actively speaking on numerous major TV programs, discussing the alt-right and hate groups, providing a keen and astute understanding of what drives hate, and the tools we all have to combat it.

Arno leverages noble qualities of compassion, curiosity, and kindness to engage all human beings, building foundations for diversity appreciation and cultural agility.