Mallory Brown
People give an organisation their competence long before they give it their commitment. Most workplaces are built to extract the first and to assume the second arrives on its own. The result is a team that delivers the work and still feels transactional to everyone inside it.
Mallory Brown is a documentary filmmaker who shows organisations how small acts of attention change the way teams work, using footage she has shot in more than 60 countries.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Mallory Brown
- The material on screen is hers. More than 40 documentary films across 60-plus countries means the examples are her own footage of real people, not case studies borrowed from someone else’s research.
- Walk A Mile gives a women’s network event something concrete to stand on: 26 miles, each walked with a woman in a different country, each episode funding a local charity. It is advocacy with a documented outcome attached, not a sentiment.
- Her films have raised over $400,000 for the causes they document. The sequence she teaches, from story to action, is one she has run herself with money at the end of it.
- CVS, HSBC, Aetna and Fiat Chrysler have all booked her. The content has been tested on large commercial audiences, not only on cause-led ones.
- Four distinct keynotes cover a conference main stage, a leadership offsite, a women’s network event and a student programme, which makes her a repeat booking inside one client rather than a single slot.
Biography highlights
- Producer of more than 40 documentary films, shot across 60-plus countries
- Creator of Walk A Mile, a 26-episode series walking one mile at a time with women living in poverty, each episode funding a local women’s charity
- Films have raised over $400,000 for the causes they document
- Featured by Today, The New York Times, Crain’s Detroit Business, Huffington Post and Cosmopolitan
- Two TEDx talks, at TEDxDetroit and TEDxBismarck, and a presenter at SXSW
- Founder of World Clothes Line, and the first brand ambassador for CrowdRise, where she created the 24-Hour Impact Project
Biography
Walk A Mile is a marathon broken into 26 pieces. Each mile is walked alongside a woman living in poverty in a different country, filmed, condensed into a short documentary, and released with a local women’s charity attached to it. The first mile was walked in Tanzania in 2018.
That project is the clearest version of how Mallory Brown works. She has travelled to more than 60 countries and produced over 40 films, and the method has stayed the same throughout: one person, one story, filmed closely enough that an audience several thousand miles away recognises something of themselves in it. Her films have raised more than $400,000 for the causes they document, and her work has been covered by Today, The New York Times, Crain’s Detroit Business, Huffington Post and Cosmopolitan.
What she brings into a corporate room is the sequence underneath that work, which she teaches as three stages: empathy, connection, action. CVS, HSBC, Aetna, Fiat Chrysler and Habitat for Humanity have all put her in front of their people. The argument she makes is that the thing holding a team together is not process but the quality of attention colleagues pay each other, and that this is trainable in small, specific increments.
The appetite for difficult undertakings is not confined to the films. She and her husband sold their possessions and bought a sailboat with no sailing experience between them, then spent two years circumnavigating the Caribbean Sea. That voyage became Take the Helm, the keynote she delivers on goal setting and decision-making when conditions are not yet right.
Key speaking topics
- Empathy as a workplace capability
- Human connection and team culture
- Purpose and meaning at work
- Women’s advocacy and allyship
- Documentary storytelling for social impact
- Goal setting and decision-making under uncertainty
- Student and early-career development
Ideal for
- CHROs and heads of culture programming an all-company meeting or leadership offsite where the goal is a shift in how colleagues treat each other
- Women’s network chairs and International Women’s Day organisers who want global material rather than a panel on the same internal issues
- Conference organisers needing an opening or closing keynote with documentary film at the centre of it
- University student affairs and career services teams running graduating-year enrichment programmes
Audience outcomes
- A three-stage sequence, empathy to connection to action, that they can apply to their own team the following week
- Documentary footage from Tanzania, India and the United States, which gives a room a shared reference point for conversations about difference
- A set of small, specific actions rather than a commitment to think differently
- At women’s events, a clearer sense of what day-to-day advocacy for a colleague actually consists of
- A working understanding of how a story becomes money raised or action taken, drawn from campaigns she has run herself
Talks
Her signature keynote, built on documentary footage from across her travels, making the case that meaningful work follows from people feeling seen and connected.
Key takeaways:
- The three phases of the journey: empathy, connection, action
- How small, intentional steps compound into cultural change
- Practical tools for seeing the person instead of the problem
Lessons on goal setting and bravery drawn from two years circumnavigating the Caribbean Sea on a sailboat bought with no prior sailing experience.
Key takeaways:
- How ambitious goals are set and broken into first steps
- Working with fear rather than waiting for it to pass
- Defining a personal “Cross the Pacific” goal and committing to it
Documentary footage from the Walk A Mile series, bringing audiences into the lives of women in Tanzania, India and the United States.
Key takeaways:
- The shared challenges facing women across very different cultures
- How awareness turns into responsibility and then into action
- Specific ways to identify need and offer support to women at work
A student enrichment keynote on building a career through small, deliberate steps, drawn from her own unconventional route after graduation.
Key takeaways:
- There is no single correct path after graduation
- Goal setting and career exploration under uncertainty
- Progress comes from action rather than from having a complete plan