Courtney E. Martin

Courtney Martin is a writer who explores questions of care, morality, and the human condition. She writes a popular weekly newsletter called Examined Family and has published four books, most recently, Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America from My Daughter’s School.

She has been a weekly columnist for On Being, as well as a frequent contributor to The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor. Courtney is the creator and host of The Wise Unknown, a PRX podcast in which she gets famous people to introduce her to the wisest person they know that no one has ever heard of, and then she kicks the famous person off and interviews the “wise unknown.”

Courtney is also a two-time TED speaker, whose talks have been watched nearly 5 million times. She is a co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, popularizing the practice of rigorous, compelling reporting about responses to social problems, and is a co-founder of FRESH Speakers Bureau, diversifying and disrupting thought leadership. She has also served as the storyteller-in-residence of The Holding Co.–a lab to redesign care, and founded the Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy.

Courtney is a recipient of the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics and has held residencies at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, Hedgebrook, and the Santa Fe Art Institute. She has an honorary doctorate from the ArtCenter College of Design. These days she is living in a multi-generational household in El Cerrito, CA.