Ryan Brown

Ryan is the Managing Director for Measurement at the Doerr Institute for New Leaders. The Institute is committed to ensuring that the services it provides to students are of the highest quality and achieve the greatest impact on the development of Rice students as leaders, and Ryan oversees all measurement initiatives to this end. He regularly consults with organizations on ways to measure their impact on people, including non-profits, churches, and schools.

Prior to coming to the Doerr Institute, Ryan was the L. J. Semrod Presidential Professor of Psychology at The University of Oklahoma, where he taught and conducted research as a social psychologist for over 16 years and helped establish the Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing. He has published dozens of empirical studies on human thought and behavior, from the impact of stereotypes on human cognition, to the psychology of forgiveness, to the socio-cultural dynamics of honor. His most recent publication is Honor Bound: How a Cultural Ideal Has Shaped the American Psyche (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Ryan graduated cum laude from Rice University (Will Rice College, 1993) with a B.A. in psychology and received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He taught briefly at Amherst College before joining the faculty of The University of Oklahoma in 2000. He is married to Catherine Lee Brown (Jones College, 1994) and is a father to two boys, Nathan and Luke.