About Erica

Dr. Erica Brown is the Vice Provost for Values and Leadership at Yeshiva University and the founding director of its Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks-Herenstein Center for Values and Leadership. She previously served as the director of the Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and Leadership and an associate professor of curriculum and pedagogy at The George Washington University. Erica is the author or co-author of 15 books on leadership, the Hebrew Bible and spirituality. Erica has a daily podcast, “Take Your Soul to Work.” Her book Esther: Power, Fate and Fragility in Exile (Maggid) was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Her latest book is Kohelet and the Search for Meaning (Maggid). She and her husband live in Maryland and have four children, another four through marriage, and six exquisite grandchildren.

Erica has been published in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Tablet, First Things, and The Jewish Review of Books and wrote a monthly column for the New York Jewish Week. She serves as a consultant editor for the journal Tradition. She has also blogged for Psychology Today, Newsweek/Washington Post’s “On Faith” and JTA and tweeted on one page of Talmud study a day at DrEricaBrown. She has master’s degrees from the Institute of Education (University of London), Jews’ College (University of London) and Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Baltimore Hebrew University. Erica was a Jerusalem Fellow, is a faculty member of the Wexner Foundation, an Avi Chai Fellow and the recipient of the 2009 Covenant Award for her work in education. She was the scholar-in-residence at both The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston and as the community scholar for the Jewish Center of New York.

Erica is also the co-author of Dreaming Bigger: A Leadership Guide for Jewish Teens (Behrman House). She is a contributing editor to Faith-Honoring: A Spiritual Pedagogy (Academic Studies Press). She wrote Jonah: The Reluctant Prophet, Take Your Soul to Work: 365 Meditations on Every Day Leadership and Happier Endings: A Meditation on Life and Death (Simon and Schuster), which won both the Wilbur and Nautilus awards for spiritual writing. Her previous books include Inspired Jewish Leadership, a National Jewish Book Award finalist, Spiritual Boredom, Confronting Scandal and co-authored The Case for Jewish Peoplehood (All Jewish Lights). She also wrote Seder Talk: A Conversational Haggada, Leadership in the Wilderness, In the Narrow Places and Return: Daily Inspiration for the Days of Awe (All OU/Koren).

Erica has interviewed Isaac Herzog, the President of Israel, Madeleine Albright, David Brooks, Jeffrey Goldberg, Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, David Gregory, Dennis Ross, David Makovsky, Sarah Hurwitz, Ruth Messinger, and Dara Horn, among others.