Margaret Brunson, PhD
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Illumined Leadership Solutions
Dr. Margaret A. Brunson is a leader and luminary who loves Zumba, considers brunch a verb, finds joy in boarding airplanes, and has never met a dance floor that couldn’t hold her!
She has spent the last fifteen years loving and leading in education, public health, specifically for mental health provider and nonprofit organizations, and an academic medical center. Her areas of focus for leadership practice include: management of public health programs that serve underserved populations, developing leadership capacity within organizations, engaging communities (people, organizations, systems) to address population health, and facilitating & directing relationships between organizations providing health care to underrepresented communities.
She earned a BA in psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Go Heels!), Master of Public Administration from North Carolina Central University (Eagle Pride Amplified!) and Ph.D. in leadership studies from North Carolina A&T State University (Aggie Pride!).
Dr. Brunson is the Founder & CEO of Illumined Leadership Solutions where she leads people to purpose through leadership and organizational development coaching & consulting and professional speaking. She is also one of the co-founders of I Am TryBe, a mindful wellness brand for “Humans, being.”
Her community leadership includes board chair for StandUp-SpeakOut of NC. membership in Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., and Southeast Raleigh Table, a campus of Edenton Street United Methodist Church.
Dr. Brunson is an inspirational speaker, writer and published author. In 2012, she published New Growth: How My Hair Saved My Life. She has shared her personal message and her research-based theory, Illumined Leadership™, across the U.S. and abroad, including Barcelona, Spain. In 2016, she was named 40 under 40 Outstanding Alumni of North Carolina Central University.
Margaret A. Brunson was born and raised in North Carolina to Rev. Dr. Jesse and Mrs. Doris Brunson. She has one brother, a sister-in-love, a niece and two nephews.
