Distinguished Fellow

Dr. Brandon Vaidyanathan is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institutional Flourishing Lab at The Catholic University of America. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Business Administration from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia and HEC Montreal respectively, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Vaidyanathan's research examines the cultural dimensions of religious, commercial, and scientific institutions, and has been widely published in leading journals. He is author of Mercenaries and Missionaries: Capitalism and Catholicism in the Global South (Cornell University Press, 2019) and co-author of Secularity and Science: What Scientists Around the World Really Think About Religion (Oxford University Press, 2019). Dr. Vaidyanathan also holds a specialization in Design Thinking and Innovation from the Darden Business School and training in Nonprofit Performance Measurement from the Harvard Business School and Kennedy School, and has served as consultant and facilitator for a number of businesses, non-profits, and philanthropies. He is also Founder of Beauty at Work, a media platform which includes a podcast and YouTube channel that aims to expand our understanding of beauty: what it is, how it works, and why it matters for the work we do. He lives in Maryland with his wife Claire and their six children.