Leading with Heart: Dr. Shea Kidd Brown

Dr. Shea Kidd Brown, vice president for campus life at Wake Forest UniversityOn the steps of the student center at The University of Southern Mississippi in 1997, Dr. Joe Paul was making his usual rounds. Paul was vice president of student affairs, and he considered it crucial to spend time meeting students and engaging with them. That was how he first crossed paths with Dr. Shea Kidd Brown, then just an undergraduate in her first year at college.

Kidd Brown remembers that meeting as fateful.

“I wasn’t sure I could ‘do college,’ like many students today,” said Kidd Brown. “I wasn’t confident on campus, and there were lots of thoughts that led me to believe I wasn’t good enough.”

Paul said that right away, Kidd Brown stood out.

“She’s just so engaging, she’s hard to forget,” said Paul. “She had that extra boost of energy.”

To Paul, it is no surprise that Kidd Brown’s career in student affairs has seen a meteoric rise. From a weary teenager on a university campus to becoming vice president of campus life at Wake Forest University this January, Kidd Brown has been positively impacting the lives of students, faculty, and staff for almost two decades. Kidd Brown is committed to creating the sense of belonging crucial to retention through what she calls “hard work and heart work.”

“I’m very strengths oriented,” said Kidd Brown, who spent her first weeks at Wake Forest learning about what works well there. Knowing that, she said, will allow to her “to make meaningful change, not change for the sake of change.”