Brian S. Lowery
Credit: Misha Bruk
“My mom was a school teacher in Chicago, and growing up, I attended well-resourced schools as well as urban schools in under-resourced communities. These experiences allowed me to see how people’s life circumstances influence them from the time they are little kids and affect what they achieve. That had a huge impact on me. I’ve always wanted to understand these differences and do what I could to help make sure everyone has a chance to thrive. I’m excited to be part of something of this magnitude, and to be able to do this at a place like Stanford—where we have the intellectual, organizational, and material capacity to make an incredible difference, not just locally or nationally, but also internationally.”
Brian Lowery is a social psychologist who focuses on the way relationships shape who we are and can be, with a particular interest in the way we find meaning in life. He has been on faculty at Stanford since 2002, and has served in numerous leadership roles, including senior associate dean of the Graduate School of Business, where he is the Walter Kenneth Kilpatrick Professor of Organizational Behavior. At the GSB, he created and currently heads the Leadership for Society program and the Black Leaders Program.
Lowery’s academic research spans a variety of topics and has been published in a number of prestigious professional journals. His earliest work examined the ways even fleeting relationships can affect non-conscious associations. He has also explored the ways unearned privileges affect people perceived to belong to privileged groups. More recent work examines the way individuals understand inequality, and the way relationships shape our experience of meaning in life. In all of his work, there is an unwavering belief that who we are and the ways we move through life are fundamentally tied to our connections with others.
Lowery is the author of the book Selfless: The Social Creation of You. His book makes the case that our selves are created in both deep and fleeting interactions. In so doing, he pushes against the idea of radical individualism and makes the case for deeper investment in the communities that nurture us all.
He hosts the podcast Know What You See. In his podcast, he interviews people from a variety of walks of life to deepen our appreciation of the experiences that make us all human. In a recent TED talk, Lowery reflects on personal accomplishment and meaning in life.
Lowery's involvement with the formation of a race institute at Stanford dates back to 2020, when he was appointed to serve on the Framework Task Force to Recommend New Infrastructure for the Study of Race and the Impact of Race on Society. Lowery and Tomás Jiménez later co-chaired the Race Institute Implementation Committee, and were subsequently named the institute’s founding faculty co-directors.
Professor Lowery’s full biography is available on the Graduate School of Business website and his website.