Shaylyn Romney Garrett

Shaylyn Romney Garrett is a coauthor with Robert D. Putnam of the book The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again. She also authored American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, which won the Woodrow Wilson Award for best political science book of 2010–11. She runs the blog Project Reconnect, which journals her quest to get back to community.  

Ms. Romney Garrett’s writing and research have been featured in TIME Magazine, the New York Times, National Public Radio, BBC Radio, and the PBS Newshour. She is the cofounder of the nonprofit Think Unlimited, and her nonprofit work has been featured by the New York Times, FastCompany, LinkedIn, Harvard Business Review, and Arab Investor. She speaks Arabic, which helped her create an Arabic language curriculum on experiential learning for Jordanian public schools. In 2011, she was awarded the Draper Richards Kaplan Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship. She has also been a speaker at TEDx. 

Ms. Romney Garrett graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a bachelor of arts and is a returned Peace Corps volunteer. She lives in southern Utah with her husband, James; her children, Sophie and Aeon; and her dog, Dewey.