The Pronoia Effect
The Single Shift That Changes Everything
Coming September 1, 2026
By Brooke Hall
She built it. She lost it. What she found set her free.
“Forgiveness is difficult work, but it's the first step on the way to generous contribution and a chance to be fully awake and alive. Brooke's book is an epic poem, a journey and a practice."
— Seth Godin, Author, The Practice
A bold new lens on ambition, identity, and the unexpected gift of losing it all.
I built something extraordinary. Then I lost it.
The Pronoia Effect is the story I carried out of the fire. The building, the breaking, and the single shift in perception that turned the collapse into the awakening.
Part memoir, part spiritual reckoning. The book culminates in a practical framework for living with pronoia, the radical belief that life is unfolding for your greatest growth, even when it doesn't look that way. It closes with an original practice to begin your own transformation.
This book is for anyone who has been broken open by loss and suspects the breaking might have been the point.
A Vision Brought to Life
I co-founded America's first large-scale light festival. It drew 400,000 visitors and generated $33.8 million in economic impact. Then I lost it.
BROOKE HALL
Author | CEO | Speaker
Brooke Hall builds things at the intersection of creativity, community, and emerging technology. Over two decades, that work has taken the shape of a citywide festival, innovation conferences, cultural campaigns, an arts magazine, a creative agency, and a book.
As Founder and CEO of What Works Studio, she leads a creative agency that helps ambitious organizations sharpen their vision, move faster, and create work that matters. The studio's campaigns have shaped culture on a national scale, from viral environmental storytelling to pandemic-era brand strategy to a historic giving campaign now part of a permanent Smithsonian exhibition.
She co-founded What Weekly, an arts and innovation magazine that cultivated a new spirit of possibility in Baltimore, and Light City, America's first international light and music festival, which drew over 400,000 visitors and generated $33.8 million in economic impact in its inaugural year.
Her work has been featured by CNN, The Guardian, New York Magazine, Fast Company, and National Geographic. She is a Salzburg Global Fellow, certified meditation teacher trained by Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, and has been recognized as Innovator of the Year and Top Female CEO, among others.
Her upcoming book, The Pronoia Effect (September 1, 2026), tells the story of building something extraordinary, public collapse, and the single shift that changes everything.
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