Brené Brown — Daring Greatly, Atlas of the Heart, Dare to Lead, Vulnerability Researcher | Self Growth Videos

Casandra Brené Brown was born November 18, 1965 in San Antonio, Texas, the oldest of four children. She earned her bachelor’s in social work from the University of Texas at Austin, followed by a master’s and PhD in social work from the University of Houston, where she has held a research faculty position her entire academic career. She holds the Huffington Foundation–Brené Brown Endowed Chair at the Graduate College of Social Work.

Brown’s research career began in the early 2000s as a qualitative study of shame — a subject she initially had no intention of making her life’s work. She interviewed thousands of people over nearly a decade about their experiences of shame, vulnerability, connection, and the courage required to show up imperfectly. What emerged was a body of research that directly contradicted her own prior training: vulnerability was not a weakness to be managed but the birthplace of courage, creativity, and meaningful connection. Shame was not something to be hidden but something to be named and metabolized.

In June 2010 she delivered a 20-minute talk called “The Power of Vulnerability” at a small TEDx event in Houston. The video went viral unpredictably and has since accumulated over 65 million views. She was invited back for a main-stage TED talk in 2012 (“Listening to Shame”), adding another 17 million views. The academic researcher became — without planning to — one of the most publicly recognized social scientists in the world.

Brown published The Gifts of Imperfection in 2010, Daring Greatly in 2012, Rising Strong in 2015, Braving the Wilderness in 2017, Dare to Lead in 2018, and Atlas of the Heart in 2021 — each a #1 NYT bestseller. Her Netflix special The Call to Courage (2019) and HBO series Atlas of the Heart (2022) extended the work into broad streaming audiences. She hosts two major podcasts — Unlocking Us (personal/emotional intelligence) and Dare to Lead (organizational leadership) — which together have accumulated tens of millions of downloads.

She has delivered the closing keynote at the Aspen Ideas Festival, spoken at the White House, and trained Pixar, IBM, the Seattle Seahawks, and most of the Fortune 100 on her Dare to Lead methodology. She is married to Steve Alley, a pediatrician; they have two children and live in Houston.

Her central teaching, compressed: the willingness to show up and be seen when you cannot control the outcome is the definition of vulnerability. It is not weakness — it is the hardest courage. You cannot selectively numb emotion; when you numb fear and shame, you also numb joy, gratitude, and connection. The people who live wholehearted lives are not braver than anyone else; they are just willing to be ordinary, which is the most unordinary thing a human being can be.