Donald Miller

Donald “Don” Miller, born August 12, 1971, is an American author, public speaker, and business owner whose work has moved between personal reflection, Christian spirituality, fatherhood, relationships, and marketing. He is the CEO of StoryBrand, a marketing company, and has written books that combine essays about faith, God, and self-discovery with practical ideas about communication and meaning.

Miller grew up in Pearland, Texas, and at 21 left home for Portland, Oregon. There he owned a small Portland-based textbook publishing company called Coffee House Books. His first book, Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance: Finding God on the Open Road, was published in 2000 and later republished as Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road in 2005. In 2003, he became a New York Times bestselling author with Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, the book that first brought him wide attention.

After Blue Like Jazz, Miller continued to write about belief, identity, and the inner life. Searching For God Knows What, released in 2004, discusses how the traditional understanding of the gospel of Jesus aligns with a theory of personality. In 2006, he published To Own a Dragon, a reflection on growing up without a father. That subject also shaped his public work: he founded The Mentoring Project, a nonprofit that partners with local churches to mentor fatherless young men. In 2009, he served on a Presidential Advisory Council on Fatherhood and Healthy Families.

His later books widened the frame while keeping the same interest in story, honesty, and human change. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years was released in late 2009. Father Fiction: Chapters for a Fatherless Generation followed in 2010, and Storyline: Finding Your Subplot in God’s Story appeared in 2012. In 2015, Miller published Scary Close, a book about his views and personal history of self-discovery and intimacy in relationships. On November 30, 2013, he married Elizabeth “Betsy” Miltenberger, and they now live in Nashville, Tennessee.

Miller also became known for applying storytelling to business. In 2015, he helped The Federation for Children create the Failing Our Kids campaign, which lobbied state governments for school voucher programs. In early 2016, he consulted with Fox River Partnerships, an economic think tank in Illinois, to develop messaging for a new economic and tax plan called a Circulation Economy. In 2017, he published Building a StoryBrand, presenting the StoryBrand 7 Part Framework, a marketing framework inspired by storytelling principles. He later published Marketing Made Simple in 2020, Business Made Simple in 2021, and Hero on a Mission in 2022.

What carries through Miller’s writing is a plainspoken interest in how people understand themselves, relate to others, and make sense of faith, work, and family. His line, “When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are,” fits that interest well. It is direct, forgiving, and practical, much like the best-known parts of his work.