President
Religious Freedom & Business Foundation
Dr. Brian Grim is an “applied academic” who has lived and worked globally since 1982. He established some of the early student and teacher exchanges between the US and China, and he helped found the first western-style business school in the former Soviet Union. He has also held teaching and curriculum design positions in the Middle East, such as the redesign of the first-year curriculum for UAE University, the country’s flagship university.
Dr. Grim holds a Ph.D. in quantitative sociology from Penn State University, specializing in demographics, survey research, and the “religious economies” approach to the sociology of religion. Dr. Grim currently has research affiliations and/or cooperative projects with Boston University, Baylor University, Brandeis University, Notre Dame University, Brigham Young University, The Catholic University of America, and Georgetown University, where he recently chaired a doctorial committee.
Dr. Grim is also founding president of the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation and Global Chairman of Dare to Overcome, which brings together CEOs, Fortune 500 companies and major universities in support of mutual human understanding, open-mindedness, and peace. He lives in the Washington DC area at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis with his wife, Julia Beth, who coordinates study abroad for the Naval Academy. They have four grown children, each with advanced degrees in medicine, physics, and law. They have 13 grandchildren, with 3 more expected in 2022!