Kaleb Brown

My Story

I had a speech impediment for most of my life, and my journey of advocacy began at a young age through playing basketball. During college, I experienced many ups and downs with fluency, but eventually, I developed a positive relationship with my speech impediment. This led me to take the initiative of starting the first-ever national stuttering chapter in Norman, Oklahoma and becoming a committee member for the National Stuttering Association.

I began by practicing self-disclosure with my professors and in the workplace. It was during my junior year that a fire was lit inside me, and I decided that enough was enough. I reflected on the years of speech therapy I had received, and while I gained a lot from those experiences in middle and high school, I realized that it didn’t always translate to real-life situations and daily
interactions with people. Each time I went to speech therapy, I carried with me the belief that stuttering was something awful and to be ashamed of.

As I got older, my stutter became more pronounced, but by the age of 20, I finally reached a place of acceptance. I found my community who talked like me, and before then I had never met a person who stutters. For years, I had hidden behind sports, constantly searching for a title to
define who I was. It was then that I learned to embrace my stutter, accepting it as an integral part of who I am. It’s driven me help and influence others with disabilities as a young adult in a society that is constantly changing. Through this journey, I developed a resilience that remains unwavering in every space I enter.