Brief Bio (for speaking intros)
Alan Brown is a resilience educator who works with schools, organizations, and families to foster cultures of connection and wellbeing. Diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome in sixth grade, Alan has dedicated his career to understanding and addressing extreme nervous system states.
In addition to more than 15 years in schools as a classroom teacher and administrator, Alan's work is informed by his experience as a mindfulness teacher trainer with Mindful Schools, an LGBTQ+ youth crisis counselor with The Trevor Project, and a support group leader with the Tourette Association of America. He has also collaborated with leading hospitals like MassGeneral and Johns Hopkins on clinical trials exploring mindfulness as a mental health intervention.
Alan blends evidence-based practices with compassion to help people navigate the complexity of our times with greater balance, joy, and ease.
Full Bio (for written materials only, please!)
With a firm belief that all people can learn to thrive physically, mentally, and emotionally, Alan Brown offers practices that are both time-honored and evidence-based through organizational consulting, speaking, coaching, and teaching.
Alan has worked for over 15 years in both public and private school settings as a classroom teacher and school administrator. Alan has focused on creating cultures of belonging and wellbeing through co-curricular, advisory, and student support programs, as both a grade dean and dean of student life. Most recently, in New York City, he was the architect of Grace Church School’s Lab Studies program in sustainability, social justice, wellbeing, and service learning, as well as the school’s mindfulness program.
Alan has trained thousands of educators from all over the world, both to practice and to teach mindfulness and the science of wellbeing and resilience. He has designed and led a wide array of retreats, workshops, and training programs—including Mindful Schools’ year-long Mindful Teacher Certification Program and Schoolwide Implementation Program. He’s also a contributing author and editor of Mindful Schools’ K-12 student curriculum, one of the leading curricula on mindfulness for students.
Alan helped ensure inclusive school environments for LGBTQ+ educators and youth as a regional trainer and curriculum consultant for GLSEN, where he also served on the National Advisory Board for several years. And he currently supports LGBTQ+ youth in crisis as a volunteer counselor for The Trevor Project’s digital crisis & suicide hotline, TrevorChat.
In addition to his work in education, Alan is an advocate for the Tourette Syndrome community. Since 2017, he has been the facilitator of the Tourette Association’s NYC family resource & support group, and he regularly works with those newly-diagnosed and those living with tics and other comorbidities to support them with non-pharmacological strategies for living with tics. Alan is a co-developer of MBIT (a Mindfulness-Based Intervention for Tics) and has collaborated with Massachusetts General Hospital and Bowdoin College and Johns Hopkins Medicine on multiple clinical trial to assess its efficacy, with promising preliminary findings.
Alan holds academic degrees in the humanities from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Chicago and a Fulbright Fellowship to Italy, as well as advanced certifications or training in Somatic Experiencing™ Trauma Therapy, mindfulness in education, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), positive psychology & positive education, and vinyasa yoga.