Brené Brown's Blog, page 3

Natasha Hastings is known for her accomplishments on the track. An NCAA champ, an 11-time World Championship gold medalist, and a two-time Olympian — who took home gold as part of the U.S. women’s 4×400 relay team in both 2008 and 2016 — Natasha has perfected relay racing’s two main components: the sprint and the baton pass. And as any sprinter knows, it’s not just about speed, it’s about the transitions.

Natasha has made a few of those in life, too. In 2019, she became a mom, giving birth to her...

Maya Smart is a literacy advocate who is shifting the conversation around reading fluency for young readers. As a parent educator and the author of Reading for Our Lives: A Literacy Action Plan from Birth to Six, she is dedicated to empowering parents to be their children’s first and most influential teachers. Her work is driven by a passion to address the crucial early years of reading development, ensuring that every child has the opportunity to become a confident and fluent reader. Maya holds...

If there is a person who integrates all the different parts of themselves better and with more celebration than Malaka Gharib, I’m not sure who that person is. A journalist, cartoonist, and award-winning graphic novelist whose writing has been featured in the Los Angeles Times and the New Yorker, Malaka’s work is always about self-determination and cultivating belonging, most often through creativity and community. Here, the new mother shares not just her world view, but the world she hopes to c...

Karen Walrond is a Certified Dare to Lead Facilitator, trained in Brené’s research on empathy, courage, and vulnerability.

Karen Walrond investigates why we tend to look at things the way we do. As a photographer, she captures the beauty of the human spirit, and as an author and speaker, she looks closer at how we approach our shared humanity.A leadership coach, activist, and attorney, Walrond’s writing and coaching have helped thousands of people around the world find meaning and purpose...

For about a decade, Brazilian-born ballet dancer Ingrid Silva wore pink-colored ballet shoes. That is, until she joined Dance Theatre of Harlem. Fifty-plus years earlier, the company’s artistic leadership had made the unprecedented choice for dancers to wear tights and shoes that match their skin tones.  In 1969, in response to the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Arthur Mitchell, a dancer, choreographer, and the first Black dancer with the New York City Ballet, founded Dance Theatre of...

As the co-founder and editor in chief of Atmos, a biannual magazine and digital platform dedicated to ecological and social justice, Willow Defebaugh holds a vision that goes beyond the surface of the Earth and finds its way back to our hearts. From the quiet, calm waterways of Sam Man Tsai, a fishing village on the outskirts of Hong Kong, to the exuberant rhythm that pulses through Calabar, home of Nigeria’s biggest carnival, Atmos spotlights the identity, culture, and art that breathe life int...

Hands in bread baskets, the scratching of forks and knives on plates, and a hearty cheers — with the click of her camera, visual storyteller Penny De Los Santos captures those fleeting yet vibrant moments in which every meal tells a story.  
Penny is the host of the Depth Of Field podcast, which explores the search for creativity and inspiration in the visual arts.

Beirut, Lebanon

“This candlelight setting, captured right after the electricity went out before breaking Ramadan fast, ...

The idea for the 19th, a nonprofit newsroom that aims to be a source of information for those who have been underserved by and underrepresented in American media, was born during the 2016 presidential election. Emily Ramshaw, then the editor in chief of the Texas Tribune, which itself had blazed a trail in the independent, nonprofit newsroom space when it launched in 2009, remembers that time: “Hillary Clinton’s campaign was far too often centered around questions of a woman candidate’s ‘electab...

Ten years ago, Brené started the Daring Interview series on her blog. It quickly became one of our favorite features. Now, we are relaunching the series and adding in a few new questions, including some from the late James Lipton, host of Inside the Actors Studio, and Smith Magazine’s Six-Word Memoir.

Twenty years ago, when the internet was an embryo, a small set of mothers gave birth to the influencer industry. Gabrielle Stanley Blair was one of those women. Her blog, designmom.com, covering...

Meet Lauren Choi, the visionary founder of The New Norm, a company that is reshaping the future of plastics by transforming them into wearable fabric and yarn. As a materials engineering student at Johns Hopkins University, Lauren identified the problems with current recycling processes in the United States and envisioned a future for plastics beyond traditional recycling and landfill solutions.Lauren’s leadership and entrepreneurship go hand in hand with her relentless determination to over...