She’s social media’s favorite all-American girl, clapping back at the woke mind virus. But if you had asked The Daily Wire’s Isabel Brown the type of life she was planning years ago, it would not have been this.
“I never intended on working in this industry at all, which is so funny. I really fell into it by accident,” Brown recalled.
The Colorado State and Georgetown graduate was studying to become a doctor when her passion for objective truths ignited her tongue aflame like the disciples on Pentecost.
“I found myself in college sitting in classes like physiology and anatomy and organic chemistry, [and] we were being lectured by my professors a whole lot about their personal political opinions, and why the First Amendment is out of date, or why a southern border wall was really racist,” the podcast host retorted.
Fiercely against this distorted version of academia, Brown took matters into her own hands, trying to change this sentiment on campus. Then she went to her first Turning Point USA conference. “I felt compelled to go,” she enthusiastically reminisced. “I think that was very much the Holy Spirit nudging me in the right direction, and [brought] my sister with me on a plane to Dallas, Texas, in June of 2017.”
Brown affirmed this was the moment she “instantly fell in love with activism, with the conservative movement, with the vision that this guy Charlie Kirk, this kid in New Balance dad sneakers and ill-fitting jeans, had for our country, and wanted to get involved in whatever way I could.”
The pre-med student began Colorado State’s Turning Point USA chapter that fall, and her boots have been on the ground paving the way for conservative women ever since. “I just felt this deep sense of being pulled in this direction somehow, and I think a lot of that had to do with friends and mentors I made along the way.”
One of those friends was Charlie Kirk. She recalled him telling her, “You shouldn’t go to medical school. God clearly has something else planned for you, and you don’t want to work in a fluorescently lit hospital every day. You have a voice, and you need to use it.” Brown took Kirk’s advice to heart and, after graduating, started posting on social media.
While working for TPUSA, Brown met her husband, Brock. Brown said of her friend, “I owe my career, I owe my intellectual development, I owe a lot of my faith development, and certainly my family to him.”
In the wake of Kirk’s death, Brown is seeing “a renewed fire and passion in his memory and in his legacy from people who say, consequences be damned, this is more important now than ever to bring people to Christ, to speak the truth, to revive our country, and to inspire an entire generation.”
This includes Brown. Her hard work, plus bringing her whole authentic self to the small screen in your pocket, has brought her to more than 1.2 million followers on Instagram alone. Brown credits the success to how Gen Z communicates differently, in part due to mistrust in the media. “There’s been a lot of propaganda put before young people in particular over the past decade or so, and now what you’re seeing people really yearn for in the content that they’re consuming is genuine authenticity.”
Through the years, Brown’s followers have seen her go through many of life’s greatest changes. “I was married about a year and a half ago, and I had my daughter almost seven months ago.” She believes all of her success is nothing compared to “the joy and excitement and purpose that I have as a wife and as a mom.”
The Gen Z firebrand is elated to see “the conservative movement start to be rooted in the importance of family as a building block for our society,” because she believes “nothing has been a stronger foundation for flourishing societies than marriages and families that are strong, and oriented towards God and godly values.”
This past October, Brown began hosting her podcast on Daily Wire+, an accomplishment she never expected. “I got a random call from the new leadership team at The Daily Wire two days before I gave birth to my daughter in April,” Brown said exuberantly.
Paraphrasing the outlet, Brown said, “They said, ‘Hey, we have a whole new leadership suite over here, a new president of the company, new heads of content, new everything, and you’re the first person we’re calling, but we’re really interested to see if you would be interested in doing anything with The Daily Wire.’” Brown felt honored to have the open-ended conversation.
One reason Brown and other content creators like her stay independent is because it can feel like the media owns you. “The industry standard is very much baked in to own you. They own all of your channels, they own all of the content that you put out.”
It’s an industry standard the native Coloradan wanted nothing to do with. “In many ways, contracts at companies like this own your name, image, and likeness in perpetuity,” Brown said, calling the practice “very restrictive.”
However, The Daily Wire doesn’t operate like this. “For the first time ever, I was told, ‘Yeah, we’re not interested in owning your name, we’re not interested in owning any of your social media channels. We want you to do you, and to be you, and do more of what you’re doing. We just want to help amplify that on the back end, and give you the institutional support to do that, and we think that could be a great partnership.’”
It was a key part of the conversation Brown was happy to have. “I’ve never had that conversation in the near decade I’ve been working in the conservative movement before, and obviously I’m not the only person that Daily Wire is bringing into our community.” The outlet’s new leadership has brought an onslaught of new talent.
More importantly for Brown, joining The Daily Wire has given her more time for life’s most important moments. “This is such a blessing from God that I never saw coming, that I can pass off a lot of the more back-end institutional stuff, so I get to spend a lot more time with my daughter, which is a far more important job than I ever will have as a podcast host.” Joining forces with The Daily Wire has made Brown’s podcast one of the fastest-growing on YouTube ever.
Her hope for the future of her podcast is simple: “Revive genuine curiosity and the process of ideological discovery again. I tell everybody, by no means do you have to agree with everything I say. That’s actually really boring.”
Brown welcomes disagreements because “we have a chance to have a real conversation [or one] in comment sections on Instagram, or live chats on YouTube, or even speaking engagements on college campuses. I see a lot of really fruitful dialogue happening with young people right now that ultimately does boil down to that pursuit of truth together.”
Questioning the science, after all, is the final step in the scientific method, which Brown was missing all those years ago in her pre-med classes.
If you are looking to fight for what is good and true, Brown believes all you need is “10 seconds of courage.”
Pointing to her own personal example, Brown said, “You don’t need to have this massive platform in order to influence the world towards truth, you just have to be willing to do it, and that’s hard.”
“Starting [my career] as a literally nobody college student, the one lone person with a rickety folding table on a sea of 33,000 student college campus handing out buttons that said socialism sucks, I honestly probably made a bigger impact intimately in people’s lives to change their mind,” Brown affirmed.
She believes this is because “I was having real face-to-face conversations with them, I was challenging them with fun questions, and developing intimate, real relationships with those people that you just can’t replicate through a screen.”
You don’t have to be an influencer to change the world, but you can have a huge impact on your “spheres of influence,” be it the people you sit next to at church, in class, or around your Thanksgiving dinner table.
“So be courageous,” she said before profoundly adding, “Be willing to speak the truth, even when it’s scary, and your boldness in your intimate sphere of influence matters a whole lot more than a video I post on TikTok.”
Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.
Krystina Alarcon Carroll contributes features and columns for Barrett Media. She has experience in almost every facet of the industry including: digital and print news; live, streamed, and syndicated TV; documentary and film productions. Her prior employers have included NY1 and Fox News Digital and the Law & Crime Network. You can find Krystina on X (formerly twitter) @KrystinaAlaCarr.
