LEILANI M. BROWN, CEO

Leilani M. Brown is the Founder and CEO of Giant Steps, LLC, a consulting firm specializing in strategy, culture, and governance. She advises executives, boards, and leaders across corporate, nonprofit, arts and cultural, healthcare, and education organizations. Through Giant Steps Career, the firm also delivers professional, career, and leadership development programs for talent at every level. Leilani hosts Giant Steps with Leilani Brown, a podcast about the pivotal decisions and reinventions that shape meaningful work, and writes a Substack on the same themes.

Before founding Giant Steps, Leilani built an award-winning executive career at Stride, Starr Insurance Companies, The Economist Group, MetLife, and American International Group. She is a global keynote speaker on governance, career, workforce, and culture, and the author of three books: From Campus to Career: 25 Tips for Your First Professional Year— now marking ten years in print as a trusted guide for interns, new graduates, and young professionals — Your Next Giant Steps: 25 Practical Tips for Job Search Success, and Your Next Giant Reset: A Career Comeback Plan. Her work on workforce development, equity, and inclusion has appeared in Newsweek, Fortune, EdTech Digest, Authority Magazine, and Scary Mommy.

Leilani serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees at Middlebury College, her alma mater, and as a board member of the Charleston Literary Festival. Over more than 15 years of governance leadership across nonprofit, education, and arts and culture organizations, she has served as Board Chair of the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning and Board Secretary of the Executive Leadership Council.

She holds a B.A. from Middlebury College and an M.P.A. from New York University, and earned a Directorship Certification® from the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD).