BRAVE. is a justice centered leadership and crisis advisory grounded in education. We partner with leaders and leadership teams who carry real responsibility and understand that leadership, especially in moments of complexity or crisis, has real consequences for people and communities.

Our work is rooted in service to historically excluded communities and shaped by a deep understanding of education systems, governance, and public accountability. We support senior leaders, boards, and teams as strategic thought partners, helping them navigate equity, change, and high stakes decision making with clarity, courage, and integrity.

We work alongside leaders in the moments when decision-making feels heavy and exposed. Our role is to steady, reinforce, and strengthen leadership rather than replace it. Through partnership, strategy, and care, we help leaders and teams align values with action and move forward with confidence, accountability, and humanity

About Dr. Brooke Rios

I am a justice-centered leadership advisor and crisis partner. I support leaders and leadership teams navigating complexity, transition, crisis, and high-stakes decision-making, especially when power, equity, and accountability are at play. I work with leaders who understand that decisions matter because people do.

I identify as a cisgender, straight, white woman, and I am committed to racial justice because leadership creates, defines, and preserves systems.

As a white person, I acknowledge that many systems in this country advantage me, particularly the education system. Through decades of work serving urban public schools, I have witnessed how that same system systematically disadvantages many students, families, and communities. These inequities are not accidental. They are produced and sustained through leadership decisions, policies, and practices.

I am committed to disrupting this dynamic through justice-centered leadership and decision-making. For me, this work is not about intention but about action and impact.

As Paulo Freire reminds us, “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” For me, there is no neutrality in the face of inequity. Leadership either reinforces unjust systems or works to dismantle them.

I grew up in a predominantly white community where race and power were rarely named explicitly. My first real call to action came in ninth grade, when an English teacher facilitated a unit on genocide and racism. During that unit, a classmate’s stepfather, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, wrote a letter to our class offering to share his “perspective.” I wrote back and shut it down. That moment did not make me an expert or an ally, but it made something clear early on: silence is a choice, and neutrality is not harmless.

I have been on a decades-long journey as a white anti-racist leader ever since. The work has been messy, humbling, and far from perfect. As I have found, growth comes through humbling mistakes and the willingness to engage in critical self reflection. Sometimes I get it right. Sometimes I do not. When I fall short, I see it as a responsibility to lean in further, listen more deeply, and continue learning.

My work is grounded in education leadership. For more than two decades, I have served as an executive leader supporting schools, systems, boards, and nonprofit organizations through moments of crisis, transition, governance challenges, and sustained change. As the CEO of a school network, I navigated racial harm, public scrutiny, organizational restructuring, and high-visibility crises where decision-making, communication, and ethics were inseparable.

I am a scholar-practitioner. My doctoral research at UCLA, Waking Up to Racism, examined how leaders engage in reflective, anti-racist practice. That work continues to inform how I partner with leaders today, blending lived experience, critical self reflection, and systems thinking.

For me, leadership is personal. I am a parent first. My child, Emme, is the center of my world and has profoundly shaped how I understand justice and advocacy. I am married, value partnership deeply, and believe leadership is strongest when it is relational rather than performative. Running is how I stay grounded when the stakes are high. I also share my life with a rescued cocker spaniel named Clover, who reminds me daily of patience, care, and second chances.

I am interested in disrupting systems, not performing values. I believe leadership decisions shape who is protected, who is heard, and whose lives are treated as expendable. As a white woman, I have a responsibility to use my access, influence, and position to challenge inequitable systems rather than benefit quietly from them.

I am not a savior. I stand with those with lived experience who deserve justice, equity, and the right to live safe and free from harm.

This work is an integrated part of my life. I approach it with seriousness, humility, and resolve, and I partner with leaders who are willing to do the same.