Brené Brown

Brené Brown
Born	Casandra Brown 18 11, 1965
Birthplace	San Antonio, Texas, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Research professor, author, podcaster, lecturer
Title	Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair, Graduate College of Social Work
Employer	University of Houston
Known for	Research on vulnerability, shame, and leadership
Education	Ph.D. in Social Work (University of Houston)
Website	[[brenebrown.com brenebrown.com] Official site]

Casandra Brené Brown (born November 18, 1965) is an American research professor, author, and podcaster who holds the Huffington Foundation's Brené Brown Endowed Chair at the University of Houston's Graduate College of Social Work and serves as a visiting professor in management at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Brown has spent more than two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy, producing a body of qualitative research that has reached audiences far beyond academia. Her 2010 TEDx Houston talk, "The Power of Vulnerability," became one of the most viewed TED talks in history, propelling her into public prominence as a commentator on emotional life, organizational leadership, and human connection. She has written six number-one New York Times bestselling books, hosted two podcasts on Spotify, and appeared in documentary specials on Netflix and HBO Max. Brown's work has been credited with shifting mainstream conversations around vulnerability from a perception of weakness to one of strength, and her research-based frameworks have been adopted by organizations, educators, military leaders, and mental health professionals around the world.

Early Life

Brené Brown was born Casandra Brown in San Antonio, Texas. She grew up in Texas and has described her upbringing and family life in various public interviews and writings over the course of her career. Brown has spoken publicly about growing up in a family environment that shaped her later interest in the dynamics of shame, belonging, and emotional expression. In interviews, she has noted that her childhood experiences in Texas left a lasting imprint on her identity and worldview.

Brown has described herself as someone who did not follow a linear path to academia. Before pursuing graduate education, she held various jobs and navigated personal challenges that would later inform her scholarly interest in resilience and human connection. She has spoken openly about her faith background, identifying as a person of faith whose spiritual life has been a persistent thread throughout her personal and professional development. In a 2025 interview with NPR's Rachel Martin, Brown discussed how her faith has remained a constant even as her public profile has changed, describing herself as "stubborn" about maintaining her spiritual commitments.

Brown has maintained strong ties to Texas throughout her life and career. In a 2025 interview with Texas Highways magazine, she described how her home state has grounded her identity, drawing parallels between the landscape and character of Texas and her own approach to navigating complex emotional terrain.

Education

Brown pursued her higher education at the University of Houston, where she earned both a master's degree and a doctorate in social work from the Graduate College of Social Work. Her doctoral dissertation, completed in 2002, was titled "Acompañar: A Grounded Theory of Developing, Maintaining and Assessing Relevance in Professional Helping," and employed grounded theory methodology to examine how professionals develop and sustain meaningful connections in helping relationships. The grounded theory approach — a qualitative research method focused on developing theory from systematically gathered and analyzed data — became a hallmark of Brown's subsequent scholarly work. Her academic training in social work provided the methodological foundation for the research on shame, vulnerability, and human connection that would later reach a global audience.

Career

Academic Research

Brown joined the faculty of the University of Houston's Graduate College of Social Work, where she built a research program centered on the study of shame, vulnerability, courage, empathy, and human connection. Her research has employed qualitative methods, particularly grounded theory, to explore how individuals experience and navigate shame and vulnerability in their personal and professional lives. Over a career spanning more than two decades, she conducted thousands of interviews and developed theoretical frameworks that sought to illuminate the role of vulnerability in fostering authentic human connection and organizational effectiveness.

In February 2016, the University of Houston announced the establishment of the Huffington Foundation's Brené Brown Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work, a named professorship funded by the Huffington Foundation in recognition of Brown's contributions to the field of social work research and her impact on public discourse around emotional well-being and leadership. Brown has also served as a visiting professor in management at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, where she has brought her research on vulnerability and courage into the context of organizational leadership and business education.

Brown developed a professional training and certification program called The Daring Way™, which trains therapists, counselors, educators, and organizational leaders to apply her research findings in clinical and professional settings. The program is based on her published research on shame resilience and vulnerability.

TED Talks and Public Prominence

Brown's public profile expanded dramatically following her June 2010 TEDx Houston talk, "The Power of Vulnerability," in which she drew on her research to discuss how embracing vulnerability can lead to greater connection, creativity, and courage. The talk resonated with audiences worldwide and became one of the most viewed talks in the history of the TED platform. The viral success of the talk introduced Brown's academic work to a mainstream audience and generated sustained media interest in her research.

Brown delivered a subsequent TED talk, "Listening to Shame," which further explored themes from her research. Together, her TED appearances established her as one of the most prominent public voices on the subjects of vulnerability and emotional courage, bridging the gap between academic social work research and popular self-improvement and leadership discourse.

Books

Brown has authored multiple books, six of which reached number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Her books translate her academic research into accessible frameworks for general readers, organizational leaders, educators, and clinicians.

Her notable published works include:

• I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't) — Brown's first book, which introduced her research on shame and the concept of shame resilience theory to a general audience.
• The Gifts of Imperfection — A book focused on what Brown describes as "wholehearted living," drawing on her research to outline practices for cultivating authenticity, self-compassion, and resilience.
• Daring Greatly — Taking its title from a passage in Theodore Roosevelt's "Citizenship in a Republic" speech, the book argues that vulnerability is not weakness but rather the foundation of courage and meaningful connection. The book drew significant attention from organizational leaders and educators.
• Rising Strong — A book examining the process of recovering from failure and setback, rooted in Brown's research on resilience.
• Braving the Wilderness — A book addressing themes of belonging, loneliness, and the courage to stand alone.
• Dare to Lead — Brown's book focused specifically on leadership, which argues that effective leadership requires vulnerability, values clarity, trust-building, and the willingness to have difficult conversations. The book has been widely adopted in organizational and corporate settings.
• Atlas of the Heart — A book mapping human emotions and experiences, which Brown describes as a guide to understanding the language of meaningful connection.
• Strong Ground — Published in 2025, the book focuses on values clarity and living grounded in one's core beliefs. Brown discussed the book in conversations with organizational psychologist Adam Grant and in listener Q&A sessions on her podcast.

A 2026 Business Insider article profiled a management consultant who cited Dare to Lead as the book that inspired him to leave a six-figure job, illustrating the continued influence of Brown's work on individual career decisions and organizational culture.

Podcasts

Brown has hosted two podcasts distributed through Spotify. Her podcasting work has allowed her to expand on the themes of her books and research in a conversational format, frequently featuring interviews with other researchers, authors, and public figures. Episodes have covered topics including leadership, emotional literacy, belonging, and values-based decision-making. In a 2025 episode, Brown and Adam Grant discussed the concept of "strong ground" and what values clarity can mean for individuals, teams, and organizations.

Film and Television

In 2019, Netflix released Brené Brown: The Call to Courage, a documentary special filmed at UCLA's Royce Hall in which Brown presents her research on courage and vulnerability to a live audience. The special introduced her work to the streaming platform's global subscriber base.

In 2022, HBO Max released a documentary series based on Brown's book Atlas of the Heart. The series adapted the book's exploration of human emotions into a multi-episode format, combining Brown's commentary with personal stories and visual storytelling.

Consulting and Organizational Work

Brown's research has been applied in organizational, military, educational, and clinical contexts. Through The Daring Way™ certification program and her broader consulting and speaking work, she has trained professionals across multiple sectors to integrate concepts of vulnerability, shame resilience, and values-based leadership into their practice. A 2018 profile in Inc. magazine detailed her growing role as a leadership consultant and the uptake of her research-based frameworks in corporate environments.

Her concept of belonging versus "fitting in" — the idea that true belonging does not require individuals to change who they are, while fitting in demands self-betrayal — has been discussed in leadership, counseling, and educational contexts. In a 2025 podcast appearance, Brown articulated this distinction, stating that "the opposite of belonging is actually fitting in."

Personal Life

Brown has lived in Houston, Texas, for much of her adult life, maintaining her connection to the state where she was born and educated. She has spoken publicly about her family life in her books and talks, though she maintains boundaries around the privacy of her family members. Brown has discussed her marriage and her experience as a parent in the context of her research on vulnerability and wholehearted living.

Brown has been open about her personal struggles with vulnerability and perfectionism, noting in interviews and her TED talks that her research findings initially challenged her own assumptions and habits. She has described experiencing what she has called a "breakdown" (which she later reframed as a "spiritual awakening") in response to the findings of her own research, an experience she discussed in her 2010 TEDx talk and subsequent writings.

Her faith has been a recurring subject in public conversations. In a 2025 interview with NPR's Rachel Martin on the Wild Card podcast, Brown described herself as "stubborn" about her faith, discussing how her spiritual life has remained central to her identity even as her public platform has grown.

Brown was recognized by Houston Woman Magazine as one of Houston's notable women.

Recognition

Brown's career has brought her recognition across academic, media, and organizational domains. The establishment of the Huffington Foundation's Brené Brown Endowed Chair at the University of Houston in 2016 represented a significant institutional honor, endowing a named professorship in recognition of her scholarly contributions and public impact.

Her 2010 TEDx Houston talk became one of the most viewed TED talks of all time, generating tens of millions of views and establishing Brown as one of the platform's most prominent speakers. The success of her TED appearances led to invitations to speak at major conferences, corporate events, and media programs, including appearances on Oprah Winfrey's Super Soul Sunday.

Brown's books have collectively sold millions of copies, with six reaching the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Her Netflix special The Call to Courage (2019) and HBO Max series Atlas of the Heart (2022) extended her reach into documentary filmmaking and streaming media.

She was named one of Houston's most influential women by Houston Woman Magazine. Her work has been profiled in publications including Forbes, Inc., The Houston Chronicle, Texas Highways, and NPR, among others.

Brown appeared at the 2025 South by Southwest festival, continuing her engagement with public audiences and the broader cultural conversation around leadership, vulnerability, and emotional intelligence.

Legacy

Brown's work has been credited with shifting public and organizational discourse around vulnerability. Before her research gained widespread attention, vulnerability was frequently framed in popular culture and organizational settings as a liability or weakness. Through her books, TED talks, and public speaking, Brown advanced the argument — grounded in her qualitative research — that vulnerability is a necessary component of courage, creativity, innovation, and authentic human connection.

Her influence has been particularly noted in the fields of organizational leadership and management. Dare to Lead and her associated consulting and training programs have been adopted by corporations, nonprofits, military organizations, and educational institutions seeking to build what Brown calls "brave cultures." The integration of her research into the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin reflects the cross-disciplinary reach of her work, extending social work research into the domain of business education and leadership development.

Brown's concept of shame resilience theory — the idea that individuals can develop strategies for recognizing and navigating shame in constructive ways — has influenced clinical practice in social work, counseling, and psychotherapy. The Daring Way™ certification program has trained clinicians and facilitators in multiple countries to apply her frameworks in therapeutic and organizational contexts.

Her influence on popular culture is evidenced by the adoption of her vocabulary — terms like "vulnerability," "shame resilience," "wholehearted living," and "brave leadership" — into everyday discourse about personal development and organizational culture. A 2025 article in Baptist News Global referenced "the Brené" as a cultural shorthand, illustrating the extent to which her name has become associated with a particular approach to emotional life.

Brown's 2025 book Strong Ground continued to extend her research into questions of values clarity and identity in an era of rapid change and polarization, suggesting that her influence on public discourse remains ongoing.