Isabel Brown has been laughed at for saying that her generation will save America. 

Undaunted, the Generation Z content creator has pressed on, having learned, as she told a recent Young America’s Foundation conference, “When you receive that backlash ... it is the perfect flashing marquee sign, airport traffic-control director that you are running in the right direction.”

Brown’s dogged persistence in sharing her message and views on the generation born between 1997 and 2012 has earned the 28-year-old more than 1 million followers on Instagram and more than half a million on TikTok, 100,000-plus subscribers on YouTube and nearly 60,000 followers on X. On Sept. 8, she further expanded her reach with the addition of The Isabel Brown Show to The Daily Wire podcast lineup. 

At Daily Wire, she joins two other Catholic hosts — Michael Knowles and Matt Walsh — on a platform that was started by Orthodox Jew Ben Shapiro. 

Brown said she had been wanting to enlarge her audience and take her content to a new level for some time when Daily Wire’s leadership team unexpectedly reached out to her in April, two days before the birth of her daughter, Isla. “We had an amazing back-and-forth exchange and a powerful meeting of minds about the need to shift our culture,” Brown told the Register. 

On her Daily Wire show, she hopes to provide a blueprint for the American dream for the next generation. “Many are telling us that’s not an option for Gen Z, but as a Gen Z-er myself, that is incredibly disheartening to hear. What I’m seeing with other Gen Zers only gives me more hope.” 

Brown said older generations have tagged Gen Z with a very specific identity — that of crybabies who live in their parents’ basements and are ruining the country, destroying marriage and causing gender confusion. “I have always pushed back on this narrative,” Brown said, “because I don’t see it to be true on the hundreds of college campuses I’ve visited and the millions of Gen Zers I engage with on digital platforms.” 

Her vision was aligned with that of the late Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, who was assassinated on Sept. 10 while speaking at Utah Valley University. In a post on X, Brown spoke of Kirk as a fellow warrior in the conservative movement, close friend, and her most influential mentor for the past eight years. 

The week before he was killed, she said, they had shared a stage at a church in central California. 

“Charlie took the stage,” she wrote in the post, “and again captivated the audience in a way I’ve perhaps never seen. He spoke not just about the importance of fighting for our country, but for humanity to once and for all defeat evil. For us to show up and fight in the spiritual warfare we don’t see with our own two eyes, but is waging on constantly all around us. For several minutes, he spoke to our calling from Christ to be ‘Salt and Light’: a calling misunderstood by many, but [which] boils down to one action — to transform [our] surroundings.”

In her book, The End of the Alphabet: How Gen Z Can Save America, which was released eight months before the 2024 presidential election, Brown makes her case for her generation’s capacity to restore the country to conservative values. 

Although she had been told hers was a great idea in theory, but completely unworkable, Brown believes Donald Trump’s election proved her right, as Gen Z helped deliver his victory. Among the factors, she said, was young women shifting from Democrat to Republican by 11 points between 2020 and 2024, even though they had been told they should vote for the candidate who shared their biology and was campaigning on the single issue of abortion. 

What happened in November, Brown said, has been germinating for several years. Contrary to their image among baby boomers and others, Brown said Gen Z-ers want to get married and are embracing traditional religious faith. Additionally, many have started their own businesses and are eschewing traditional liberal arts degrees for STEM degrees and trade schools.

Brown’s own life largely mirrors that picture. She is married to fellow conservative Brock Belcher, whom she met through Turning Point USA, which defends conservative values on campuses, online and in the public square. She is a faithful Catholic who had a reversion to the Church and was her husband’s sponsor when he decided to convert. And, although she started on a traditional college path with plans to become a doctor, her turn into activism landed her in the field of digital media where she labors today. 

As a pre-med student at Colorado State University, Brown had hoped to marry her love of science and pursuit of objective truth with serving other people in medicine. 

“From elementary school on I wanted to be a physician,” she said, “but I learned very quickly that the academic side of science was not about objective truth.” Instead, she found herself arguing about polarizing political topics such as gender choice, whether the Constitution was out of date and whether a border wall was needed. Even after spending more than six months learning about fetal development, she said, she was told abortion did not end a human life. 

Brown continued studying for a bachelor’s degree in biomedical sciences, going on to get a master’s degree in biomedical sciences policy and advocacy from Georgetown University. But she started speaking up on campus about conservative values and, as social media came into being, established an online presence, posting her thoughts and engaging others in conversation.

“Through this process,” she said, “I have been blown away at the way God has facilitated conversations. It started on campus, and now it’s taking place in comment sections on Instagram and TikTok. People are wrestling with questions like ‘Should I be taking birth control pills after I’ve been taking them for five to 10 years?’ and ‘What does dating life look like?’ and ‘Do I still want to get married?’” Many, she said, are turning to religion — and as a result, she has seen a massive Catholic, Christian revival in her generation. 

Although Brown shifted gears away from her dream of medical school, she said, “I do like to say my career is still based in the pursuit of objective truth and trying to help society navigate truth.”

She has pursued that as a happy warrior, making her points with verve and cheer, something she learned growing up with parents who encouraged her and her sisters to talk religion and politics at the dinner table.

Brown said her parents, who are both lawyers, also urged their daughters to get involved in speech and debate in school. In addition, she said, “My parents instilled in us to have an optimistic, joyful perspective on the world because you can do something about it: You can tell the truth to the world, and nothing can hold you back if you’re willing to work hard enough.”

Inspired by Catholicism

A product of Catholic elementary and high schools, Brown said her Catholic faith always was important to her while growing up, though she veered away from the Church in college out of frustration with those in her Catholic campus ministry who did not support her political activism. She ended up exploring other campus ministry groups and started attending Protestant churches out of curiosity. But a trip to the Holy Land in 2022 with Turning Point USA gave her a new fervor for the Church. Coincidentally, her then-boyfriend, now-husband, who was a devoted Southern Baptist at the time, had a similar experience on the trip, one that led him to become Catholic. 

As he went through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, Brown discovered that she needed to shore up her knowledge of the faith. “He was navigating academic-level theological questions I had learned in second grade, but I didn’t have a great foundational answer for him,” Brown recalled. She ordered several hundred dollars’ worth of Catholic books and acquired a newfound zeal for academic theology that inspired her to enroll in a master’s program in theology at the University of Notre Dame. She is in the second year of the program and for her “Capstone Project” is considering delving into the idea that the missionary spirit lives on in online digital content. Brown recently attended the Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers in Rome.

In an Instagram post about the conference, Brown said, “I had the joy of unplugging the last few days for just over a 48-hour stint in Rome to gather with 1,100+ other ‘digital missionaries’ from 75 countries as we advised the Church and the Pope on how social media can be used as perhaps our most powerful tool in history to share the gospel, and as they reminded us, the overwhelming responsibility we have as creators to inspire the soul and bring dignity to humanity.”

Building Up the Culture

Meanwhile, with her new Daily Wire show, she is planning to build on what she has started on social media by doing more long-form conversations, which she is convinced are needed to fulfill her mission of building up the culture.

As she does that, she will continue working out of her longtime home studio, but with added help from Daily Wire. “I’m used to being a team of one and editing my own videos,” she said. “I feel unbelievably blessed. I get the institutional support of a team, and I also get more time to spend with my daughter.” 

In the opening episode of her show, she promised never to be the “certified expert” on any of the subjects discussed. “Yes, I’m a wife and a mom,” she said, “but my husband and I are very much still becoming one flesh and learning what that means. And I’ve learned only one truly important thing worth sharing about parenthood. I will be learning on the job every day for the rest of my life. ... I will always wear my faith on my sleeve, and I pray every day that I am pursuing sainthood. But the truth is I am still and will forever be a repeat-offender sinner desperate for the grace of God.”