Dr. Beth-Sarah Wright

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Dr. Beth-Sarah Wright

Author, Speaker and Founder, Thrive With Dignity

Increase Capacity. Make Progress. Change Outcomes!

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Dr. Beth-Sarah Wright

Author, Speaker and Founder, Thrive With Dignity

Increase Capacity. Make Progress. Change Outcomes!

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“Thank you, thank you, thank you… for your presentation and the conversation that followed this morning. I know that everyone was deeply engaged in what you had to share, and it certainly primed the discussion that followed later in the day as we began to work through your book. Among other things, I deeply appreciated the way you were able to ground things in our context by using “our” documents and resources. I particularly appreciated your use of our baptismal liturgy as a road map to how we might “be” differently in the world. That was so helpful and a framing of the words in the liturgy that I have not heard or thought of in that way before.”

Archbishop Jeremy Greaves, Brisbane, Australia; Anglican Schools Commission, Annual Heads Retreat 2025.

Area Campuses Focused on Episcopal Identity, Dignity

Atlanta author Beth-Sarah Wright challenges, encourages North Texas schools – By: John Holt

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What difference does Episcopal identity make, particularly in an academic setting, and how can educators live that out more authentically in a way that promotes dignity?

Beth-Sarah Wright, an Atlanta-based author, speaker, and founder of Thrive with Dignity LLC, helps schools and others answer questions like those.

The National Association of Episcopal Schools (NAES) chose one of her books – Dignity: Seven Strategies for Creating Authentic Community – as the featured book for 2023, and a year later campus leaders are still looking to her for insight and inspiration.

“We have set our theme for the year as dignity as we spend the year considering her messages,” said Julie McLeod, head of school at Good Shepherd Episcopal School.

Good Shepherd in August hosted more than 200 Episcopal School educators from across the region for a day of learning, collaboration, and community with Wright as the featured speaker.

“Dr. Wright’s presentation was both inspiring and grounding,” McLeod said.

Matt Rush, the Allen Meyer Family head of school at Parish Episcopal School, echoed those sentiments.

“Moreover, she encouraged us to be proud of the Episcopal Identity we espouse, as our school endeavors to encourage young people to grow into thoughtful, inclusive people of character and purpose,” he said.

Other area schools represented included Episcopal School of Dallas, St. John’s Episcopal School, and St. Michael Episcopal School.

“I was so impressed by the collaboration of the Episcopal Schools,” Wright said. “The fact that they’ve come together to learn more and really explore Episcopal Identity is tremendous.”

Her book details the importance of organizations being authentic to who they say they are and diving deep into implementing her seven DIGNITY Lens strategies: diversity, identity, growth, nurture, integrity, transparency, and yield.

Wright sees her role as a partner with schools and organizations to ask catalytic questions to help identify gaps and increase capacity to make progress on the gaps rather than simply providing suggestions to close them.

“Part of a leader’s role is to be able to motivate others to take up the hard work that is adaptive change,” Wright said.

Good Shepherd Episcopal Church rector, the Rev. Michael Mills, said the author’s presence and presentations served as powerful reminders that, in Episcopal tradition, actions and attitudes all flow from the baptismal font and the promises made there.

“Each person has dignity, (Dr. Wright) reminded us again and again,” Mills said. “And as Episcopalians, we have promised to do our best to see that dignity, respected and protected.”

Content writer John Holt does public relations for Good Shepherd Episcopal School.

ADJUNCT FACULTY SPOTLIGHT 2024

Beth-Sarah Wright, PhD, MPhil

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Beth-Sarah Wright is an educator, mental health advocate, author, and co-founder of Thrive With Dignity, a consulting organization dedicated to helping mission-driven institutions align authentically with their purpose. With over 27 years of experience as a professor, researcher and senior leader, she created the DIGNITY Lens©, a framework centered on human dignity with seven strategies to interrogate organizational integrity and foster alignment with institutional values. Built around seven strategies, the DIGNITY Lens© empowers all stakeholders, not just those with formal authority, to identify and close organizational gaps. 

As the author of eight books, including Me, Depressed: A Story of Depression from Denial to Discovery, DIGNITY: Seven Strategies for Creating Authenticity, and Deep Joy: 40 Meditations for Your Journey, Beth-Sarah explores the pursuit of authenticity, respect for human dignity and the courage to confront difficult truths. Her writing reflects her journey through cultural differences, faith, healing and her struggles with depression, offering a way to connect with our shared humanity. Storytelling is transformative, and creating brave spaces for people to share their stories is essential for healing, recovery and peace.

Beth-Sarah most recently served as the director of enrollment management at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School in Atlanta, the largest parish Episcopal school in the country, for 10 years before launching Thrive With Dignity. She is a former professor at New York University and Spelman College in expository writing and the director and lecturer of the African Diaspora and the World program, respectively. She earned her PhD in Performance Studies from NYU, focusing on corporeal healing of historical trauma in Jamaican Dancehall Culture; an MPhil in Anthropology from Cambridge University, with research on the intersection of identity politics, power and performance poetry in Black Britain and a BA in Sociology and Afro-American Studies from Princeton University (magna cum laude). She is originally from Jamaica and has lived and studied globally. She is married to Robert C. Wright, the Episcopal Bishop of Atlanta, and together they have raised five beautiful adult children. 

As an adjunct faculty member, Beth-Sarah’s focus has been on integrating suicide awareness and prevention, faith and cultural sensitivity within the broader context of mental health and healing and has served on the Diversity, Inclusion and Social Justice Committee (DISC). In her Grand Rounds lecture, she used data to highlight the increasing prevalence of depression and anxiety among medical students and others, emphasizing the transformative power of vulnerability and importance of sharing personal struggles and stories to enhance the healing journey. She has been honored to share insights and encouragement with diverse audiences locally, nationally and internationally, helping them navigate the often-challenging intersections of faith, mental health challenges and healing.

Beth-Sarah works with communities to develop strategies for fostering healing in diverse settings, always recognizing that dignity is the foundation of any mental health intervention. As a sought-after keynote speaker, she has addressed faith communities, educational institutions and organizations such as the Care and Counseling Center of Georgia, Lee Arrendale State Prison for Women, Will for Hope’s Annual Mental Health Connections Week, the Morehouse School of Medicine, Candler School of Theology, Women in the Spirit of St. John Chrysostom Episcopal Church in Golden, Colorado and Rainbow Village, to name just a few, on these topics of faith, mental health and healing. 
As a Jamaican and trained anthropologist and ethnographer, she must address mental health through an intercultural lens, exploring how different communities understand and respond to mental health challenges. In the ongoing effort to destigmatize mental health, she emphasizes cultural sensitivity while grounding all discussions in the fundamental value of human dignity. Finally, Beth-Sarah is passionate about helping organizations create environments where human wellness is cared for and nurtured. Through the DIGNITY Lens©, she focuses on fostering spaces where individuals can thrive holistically, recognizing wellness is core to building thriving communities.

What Beth-Sarah most enjoys about her role as an adjunct faculty member is the opportunity to raise awareness about mental health challenges while emphasizing that hope, help and healing are always possible. Engaging in conversations about suicide awareness, prevention and the stigma surrounding depression and other mental health challenges is both a profound responsibility and a great privilege. She also values the chance to represent the cutting-edge and pioneering work of Emory’s Department of Psychiatry, which continues to advance understanding, treatment and advocacy in mental health. It is significant and humbling when someone shares that reading one of her books or hearing a speech has given them the support or clarity they needed—sometimes even saving their lives. Moments like these remind her of the profound impact of open dialogue, education and innovation in fostering understanding, resilience and hope.

People may be surprised to learn when Beth-Sarah began her PhD work at NYU in 1997, many discouraged her from having children, as she was only 24 and recently engaged to be married. However, she was deeply passionate about both her academic aspirations and starting a family and was determined not to sacrifice one for the other. With the unwavering support of her husband and family, she became the first woman in her program and second person to complete the PhD, all with three babies in tow! This experience taught Beth-Sarah invaluable lessons about resilience, supporting others through challenging circumstances and institutions’ critical role in fostering environments where individuals can bring their whole and authentic selves. She often says her first son was NYU’s youngest freshman, as the university allowed her to teach with him in the classroom when he was just three months old. She would breastfeed and care for him while simultaneously teaching her class of 18- and 19-year-old first-year students. This journey fuels her passion for creating communities that are accessible and inclusive, where everyone can truly thrive with dignity.

Testimonial

The Rev. David A. Madison, D.Min., Executive Director of the National Association of Episcopal Schools (NAES)

Voices of Thriving

Discover inspiring stories from those Thrive With Dignity has Partnered With

01

“Wright’s approach blends imagination and capacity building with urgency and non-negotiable commitment.”

I wholeheartedly recommend Beth-Sarah Wright's "DIGNITY" as an invaluable resource for schools navigating the complex challenges of our time. It provides a framework for standing in the space of adaptive...
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I wholeheartedly recommend Beth-Sarah Wright's "DIGNITY" as an invaluable resource for schools navigating the complex challenges of our time. It provides a framework for standing in the space of adaptive challenges, helping all stakeholders in our school communities to ask questions, reflect, gather information, and align our work with our identity and values.

What I find most powerful is how it generates questions rather than prescriptive answers, creating opportunities to build stronger communities and deeper relationships. For schools striving to close the gap between aspirational identity and lived reality, Wright's approach blends imagination and capacity building with urgency and non-negotiable commitment. It's a must-read for all educational leaders.

-Tim Fish, President, Two Chairs Studio.

02

“The DIGNITY Lens helped us realize the need to communicate our identity and value commitments more explicitly.”

Episcopal clergy spouses are a vibrantly diverse community. The Partner’s Path originally sprang from a commitment to support all who share this complex role, across gender, orientation, race, ethnicity, and religious identity...
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We began intuitively from a Diversity assessment that our community included many different perspectives. Working with the DIGNITY lens helped us realize the need to communicate our Identity and value commitments more explicitly. Reflecting on our work with Dr. Wright has catalyzed several important initiatives in the past year.

* Our work with Identity and Transparency led directly to creation of the Covenant that all of our chapters endorse, including a commitment to inclusive community. Very much as “The DIGNITY Lens” predicts, being clear and explicit about who we are and what we value has made it easy to understand why and whether to affiliate with us. Since the creation of the Covenant, our number of diocesan chapters has nearly doubled and continues to grow. (In particular, this clarity has helped some diocesan leaders quickly understand the distinctive value that was already apparent to our local volunteer Conveners.)

* In addition to local diocesan chapters, our members have created several non-geographic Affinity Groups for clergy spouses who share other intersectional identities, including LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and parents of small children. The powerful move for us was in coming to understand these online gatherings not as special event offerings, but as permanent and essential parts of The Partner’s Path's churchwide network of communities. That affirmation grew out of our reflection on Identity and holding that together with our understanding of our Diversity as a community. We are still learning how to communicate broadly about these groups so that those who need them are able to find and trust in the support they offer.

* Honoring the Yield of our work and whether we are accomplishing what we intend, we are building a system of surveys and data analysis which has helped us and our potential supporters to understand the powerful impact of our work for reducing isolation among all kinds of clergy spouses, and where we have opportunities to grow in effectiveness. We are hearing, for example, that an affinity group for male clergy spouses to support each other would give needed space to address particular unique experiences in that demographic. The statistics and feedback that we gather have been key to helping granting organizations understand our story and see the value in our work with clergy spouses.

- Laura Jackson, Executive Director, The Partner’s Path

03

"Aligning enrollment philosophy and practices with our mission and culture."

Please accept this as my personal recommendation for Dr. Beth-Sarah Wright and her work as the Director of Enrollment Management for the past seven years at Holy Innocents' Episcopal School in Atlanta, GA...
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Please accept this as my personal recommendation for Dr. Beth-Sarah Wright and her work as the Director of Enrollment Management for the past seven years at Holy Innocents' Episcopal School in Atlanta, GA. As the largest Episcopal parish day school in the country, HIES serves 1,400 students, PK3-12th grade. I have served as the Head of School for the past ten years and as Beth-Sarah's direct supervisor.

When I hired Beth-Sarah, it was with the explicit goal of aligning our enrollment philosophy and practices with the School's Episcopal Identity so as to attract and retain a student body closely aligned with our mission and culture. Our shorthand in describing Episcopal Identity to prospective families is to talk about how we "value the individual worth and human dignity of every person" and inherent in that is creating a nurturing community that is diverse (in the broadest sense), inclusive, and dedicated to developing the whole child - Mind, Body, and Spirit.

Beth-Sarah's DIGNITY framework flowed from some of her experiences at Holy Innocents'. Her position, as Enrollment Director, became a natural testing ground for many of the DIGNITY pillars and practices. To say that Holy Innocents' benefitted from DIGNITY would be an understatement. Her book was given to our Board of Trustees as required reading. Beth-Sarah led in-service training for our whole faculty and staff around the DIGNITY principles. The end result is the diversity of our student body has more than doubled in the last seven years. We have a more focused and aligned community with respect ot our mission statement and the core values of an Episcopal education. The framework changes how we address issues of wellness and mental health ni our community. It's changed the way we communicate with our constituents and how we make decisions at the senior leadership level. We have developed more collaborative and transparent protocols. DIGNITY has impacted operations in our enrolment office, priorities for board governance, faculty and staff culture, and student wellness. Going forward, the framework is also embedded in our new strategic plan.

In short, the DIGNITY framework is critical culture work for any organization. It provides a common language, an intuitive and proven model for assessing gaps and an easily customizable plan to grow and improve an organization. Dr. Beth-Sarah Wright and her DIGNITY framework have my highest recommendation.

Sincerely,

Paul Barton Head of School

04

“We were challenged to grow personally and professionally...while also embracing the diversity of thought and perspective.”

My name is Brad Brown, and I am the Director of Admissions and Enrollment Management at Trinity School in Atlanta. I have been a Joint Admissions Test Program (JATP) member for twelve years as Director of Admissions for two different schools...
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My name is Brad Brown, and I am the Director of Admissions and Enrollment Management at Trinity School in Atlanta. I have been a Joint Admissions Test Program (JATP) member for twelve years as Director of Admissions for two different schools. The JATP is a program established between Atlanta Area Association of Independent Schools member schools and local psychologists to evaluate children applying for kindergarten through grade five. The program consists of three main constituencies: Prospective students, the applicants and their families, member schools and member psychologists.

As with any organization, the challenge is getting everyone on the same page to accomplish a common goal, in this case, administering an evaluation to applicants that schools can use as a valid data point to inform their admissions decisions. Though everyone is invested in the collective goal, we all represent our respective communities: for admissions directors, that is their school community; for psychologists, that is their individual practices; and for the families, the best interest of their children. If a sense of community and common interest is not nurtured, it's easy for individual interests to sabotage any collaborative effort.

The organization faced numerous challenges when Dr. Wright took over as JATP Chairperson. One challenge was accessibility regarding the registration process and the cost associated with the assessment. During Dr. Wright’s tenure, the psychologists and member schools collaborated to move the registration process online. This may seem like a simple process, but it required many psychologists to adapt how they conducted their business. Though they are members of the JATP, each psychologist also runs or is a member of a private practice. Typically, they function within their comfort zones and in ways that work for them. Moving away from their norms and adopting new technology was not easy initially. It required everyone to grow out of their comfort zones. Some pushback and frustration were expressed by psychologists and, at times, by admissions directors. Under Dr. Wright’s leadership, there was room to express concerns or apprehensions, and they were addressed in a way that preserved the dignity of each individual and fostered an environment of mutual respect. As a result, psychologists were brave, and member schools moved to provide support and resources to make the online registration process a reality. Was it perfect? No, but there was trust between the group that allowed us to adapt and improve.

A second challenge was that for many families, the cost of the JATP served as a barrier to completing the admissions process. Our schools are committed to creating and maintaining equitable admissions processes, so the thought that our cost was eliminating a portion of the potential applicant pool was unacceptable. At the same time, as member schools, we recognized that we were asking psychologists to extend a discount that would impact their business. Under Dr. Wright’s leadership, schools worked with member psychologists to extend a limited number of fee waivers for utilizing standard criteria established by each school’s respective financial assistance office. This truly represented a compromise that allowed our schools to honour our commitments to creating an admissions process that is equitable and accessible, ultimately making for more diverse school communities.

Another challenge that was addressed was the need for a meaningful tool to assess and support our member psychologists. Schools and psychologists are committed to supporting each other as partners while holding each other to the highest standards to preserve the integrity of the program. That involves one, ensuring that we are on the same page when we communicate the purpose of the JATP; two, the proper administration of the assessment and schools; and three, utilizing the assessment in the way it was intended. This mutual accountability was not easy since it involved humility and trust. Under Dr. Wright’s leadership, we were able to have meaningful conversations, sometimes hard conversations, based on feedback we received from prospective families. The implementation of surveys to gather feedback allowed us to affirm the great work the psychologists were doing while also giving them information to improve their practice. The feedback from families also identified the need for more racial and ethnic representation in the list of psychologists. As a result, we added two additional psychologists of diverse backgrounds.

In retrospect, I can see where implementing the DIGNITY Lens impacted the group and our outcomes. We were all challenged to grow personally and professionally as we adopted new technologies and ways of thinking about accessibility while also embracing the diversity of thought and perspective. The atmosphere of mutual accountability ensured that we preserved the integrity of the work. Above all, under Dr. Wright’s direction and through the implementation of the Dignity Lens, there was a sense of mutual respect, a strong spirit of collaboration and a sense of community. This was felt in our last meeting of the year, where we reviewed the data from the year and celebrated the many successes we achieved together.

Dr. Wright, thank you for your leadership and for encouraging us to see and work in new ways by implementing the Dignity Lens.

- Brad Brown, Director of Admissions and Enrollment Management, Trinity School, Atlanta , GA and Member of the JATP, Atlanta

05

“Readers [of DIGNITY] gain a deeper understanding of what it means to build a community that bridges the gap between who we say we are and who we actually are in everyday life.”

Dr. Beth-Sarah Wright’s book Dignity: Seven Strategies for Creating Authentic Community is an invaluable resource for educators. Through an approachable exploration of the Baptismal Covenant, readers gain a deeper understanding of...
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Dr. Beth-Sarah Wright’s book Dignity: Seven Strategies for Creating Authentic Community is an invaluable resource for educators. Through an approachable exploration of the Baptismal Covenant, readers gain a deeper understanding of what it means to build a community that bridges the gap between who we say we are and who we actually are in everyday life. Her ability to open up the theology of the Baptismal Covenant in an engaging way is a delight. This is especially important because our school communities are ecumenical with a variety of different perspectives and viewpoints all coming together to make up one beautiful tapestry.

Readers will learn about the “Dignity Lens” which is a very practical tool to assist schools and really any organization in becoming more authentic communities that strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of every human being.

When the book came out, I sent a copy to each of my schools so they would benefit from Dr. Wright’s expertise, wisdom, and grace. If you spend some time with her book and the resources therein, you will walk away better equipped to do the work that God is calling us all to do.

-The Rev. David A. Madison, D.Min. Executive Director, National Association of Episcopal Schools

06

“I write to thank you for your invaluable contribution to the 2025 ASA Annual Conference,..”

“I write to thank you for your invaluable contribution to the 2025 ASA Annual Conference, held in Brisbane at the Pan Pacific Hotel. With over 300 delegates and partners, together with some 60 sponsors, this was a record-breaking conference for us.
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Your presentation and workshops were an important part of creating a conference that was both engaging and memorable for our delegates. I appreciate the effort, enthusiasm and expertise you shared in helping us deliver a high-quality event that nurtured connection, inspired new ideas, and supported the professional growth of all participants.

The feedback from attendees has been overwhelmingly positive, with many noting the value of your insights in shaping their conference experience.

Thank you once again for your participation and for supporting the mission of Anglican Schools Australia in enhancing our member schools’ Anglican Identity.”

- Peter Laurence, Chief Executive Officer, Anglican Schools Australia