What does legacy mean to you? Does it rest in the size of your bank account when you die? The business you built from scratch? An award you won? For Craig Kielburger, the answer isn’t found in achievements, awards, or titles. It’s found in how we show up—in the lives we touch, the values we live by, and the connections we nurture daily.
In his newest book, What Is My Legacy?: Realizing a New Dream of Connection, Love, and Fulfillment, Craig Kielburger and his co-authors, Martin Luther King III, Arndrea Waters King, and his brother Marc Kielburger, invite readers to rethink the traditional concepts of legacy radically.
With a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and contributions from diverse voices, including Simon Sinek, Julia Roberts, Sanjay Gupta, Melinda French Gates, and Pete Carroll, the book blends timeless wisdom with modern relevance.
This isn’t a self-help book. It’s an urgent call to begin living a life of meaning, not sometime in the distant future, but today and every day going forward.
Introducing: What Is My Legacy?
For over thirty years, Craig has lived his life in the public eye, advocating for others while inspiring global movements for positive change through self-sacrifice and service. But this book is something different. It’s more intimate, more reflective. It’s a product of personal evolution and collective questioning, particularly in a world still grappling with disconnection, burnout, and uncertainty.
“We wrote this book because we realized people aren’t just searching for success anymore. They’re searching for significance,” Craig mentions.
Structured around the idea of a living legacy, the book challenges the traditional view of legacy as something static or posthumous. Instead, it offers a dynamic framework: legacy as a daily practice, built not just on grand gestures but small, consistent acts of courage, kindness, and alignment with one’s values. In this model, every interaction matters. Every decision leaves a trace.
Legacy in Different Perspectives
One of the most compelling aspects of What Is My Legacy? is its multi-generational lens. Martin Luther King III and Arndrea Waters King draw from their family’s profound civil rights lineage while raising questions about the legacy they’re creating for their daughter.
Craig, who recently welcomed his third child, reflects on fatherhood as both a responsibility and a compass, shaping how he defines purpose and presence. Their voices are woven to form something rare in nonfiction: a dialogue transcending age, culture, and profession.
Throughout the book, readers are invited into epic and relatable stories. There are lessons from world leaders and quiet revelations from everyday heroes: a caregiver holding the hand of a dying patient, a coach mentoring a teen through anxiety, and a parent listening—really listening—to their child. In each story, the message is clear: legacy is not built on a stage. It’s built in the quiet moments, the private choices, the ways we treat each other when no one is watching.
But What Is My Legacy? doesn’t stop at inspiration. It offers tangible practices to help readers explore and live their legacies in real time. Reflective questions at the end of each chapter guide readers to clarify their core values, map out purpose-driven goals, and identify areas where their actions may be misaligned with their intentions.
One chapter challenges readers to conduct a “legacy audit,” examining not what they’ve accumulated, but how they’ve contributed. Another chapter encourages writing a living legacy statement, not for a will, but as a roadmap for the life you want to live now.
The launch of What Is My Legacy? has been amplified by the success of My Legacy, the podcast and radio show Craig co-hosts with the Kings and Marc Kielburger. Syndicated across over 100 iHeartRadio stations, the show brings the book’s themes to life through unscripted, soulful conversations with public figures and their “plus-ones,” the people who know them best.
Guests like Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, David Oyelowo, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta don’t just reflect on their accomplishments; they unpack the intimate, often unseen moments that define who they really are.
The show’s format, pairing each guest with someone close to them, has unlocked a depth rarely found in celebrity interviews. A friend recounts the grief that shaped an activist’s worldview. A spouse shares the unseen labor behind a public career. These are the kinds of conversations the book calls people to have in their lives.
What is Your Legacy?
Craig’s message in the book, the podcast, and more recently through his compelling Instagram posts, is ultimately about agency. Legacy isn’t something bestowed upon. It’s something one chooses.
Every day, in significant ways and small, people decide who they are and what they stand for. “The greatest gift we can give our children and our communities is a life well-lived in alignment with our values,” Craig says.
That message is clearly resonating. In an age of information overload and surface-level success, What Is My Legacy? offers something rare: a guide not to doing more, but to being more–more present, more purposeful, more aligned with who we really are, and who we want to become.