Dr. Halee Gray Scott is an author, researcher, and speaker whose work begins with a question and the curiosity to follow it wherever it leads. Rather than writing from theory alone, she grounds her books in real-world research, and she has conducted more than 500 interviews on the ground, in person, with people living out their convictions.
The questions she asks are the ones people carry through their hardest seasons. What does it mean to love well? How do we overcome brokenness? What do we do when life leaves us at an impasse? To find answers, Halee has gone to people who live these questions daily. In Greece, a hub of sex trafficking in Europe, she spoke with those working to stop it. In Thailand, she met people preventing child trafficking. In Norway, one of the most secular countries on earth, she interviewed leaders inspiring young adults to dig into their Bibles. She has sat down with Oxford scholars to explore how to bring meaning to secular work, talked with those helping women in New Zealand use their gifts, and learned from leaders in Africa who are settling differences between rival tribes by creating running water.
Her two books with Zondervan, Dare Mighty Things and Not a Hopeless Case, grew out of this kind of listening, and her research has been shaped by years in women’s ministry and Christian leadership.
Halee has also converted her books into curriculum for workshops and speaking engagements, which she has led around the world, often for people in seasons of confusion and chaos.
Since 2010, she has run an independent research and leadership consulting practice. From 2017 to 2024, she continued that work while directing a Lilly Endowment–funded initiative at Denver Seminary. She also works as an independent editor, helping other authors sharpen their ideas.
In every project, her approach is the same: ask a good question, listen deeply, and share what she finds so people can take their next step.
My Passion
At the heart of everything I do, I’m passionate for people to know God. That passion shapes the questions I ask: What does it mean to love well? How do we overcome brokenness? What do we do when life leaves us at an impasse, when every river seems too wide to cross and every door we try is locked?
Love is where so many of these questions begin, and where I believe we first glimpse God. The ancient Greeks named four kinds: storge, the affection of family; philia, the bond of friendship; eros, romantic love; and agape, selfless, sacrificial love. We are made for all of them, and each can be wounded. In a time of rising loneliness, when many people are turning to AI for companionship, sometimes in secret, I want to understand what they are really longing for and what it costs them when real connection feels out of reach.
But I’m just as drawn to the other side of the story: the seasons of losing, hurting, and waiting. Kipling’s poem “If” and Coldplay’s song “Lost!” both speak to me because they tell the truth. Losing doesn’t mean we’re lost, and hurting doesn’t mean our story is finished. It’s often in those very places that people meet God. That conviction runs through everything I do, including Dare the Mighty, a separate website and mission devoted to people daring to do hard and mighty things.
In Dare Mighty Things, I wrote, “Do not settle for a safe life, with mediocre dreams that are not worthy of Jesus Christ. Your life matters.” I still believe it, especially for anyone walking through the wilderness, with no map and no way forward.
My Goal
My goal is to keep doing the work I love: writing, listening, and telling people’s stories faithfully. Every story I’m entrusted with belongs to a real person, and I want to honor it by getting it right, with accuracy, humility, and care.
I want to keep asking good questions and sitting with the people who have lived through them. Their stories remind us that we are not the first to walk through hard places, and that others have found a way.
I also want to keep speaking, teaching, and training. Through talks, workshops, and curriculum, I hope to equip people with tools they can use in their own lives, families, and communities.
Most of all, I want to walk alongside people in seasons of darkness and brokenness, whether they are walking through the wilderness or standing before a locked door. I can’t promise easy answers. But I can offer honest stories, careful research, and the steady conviction that no one’s life is beyond hope, and that God meets us even there.