2026 All-Conference Session: Dr. Patrice Buckner Jackson
During her keynote, Dr. Patrice Jackson Buckner shared the tools she has developed for a life strategy she described as “Discover Your Brilliance.” The strategy of combining tools and talent was created after Buckner abruptly left a job in higher education due to experiencing a severe case of burnout.
“All I could say was that I’m so sorry,” she recalled saying when making the decision to leave her job. “And I will never forget the worry and the concern and the question in their faces, and all I could say, all I could get out of my mouth was, ‘I’m so sorry.’ And I left.”
It took time for Bucker to heal, but eventually she realized she needed a new strategy. “I’m like, ‘Girl, I don’t know, I have no idea what I’m going to do,’ but I made a decision: I needed a new strategy.”
Buckner then unveiled the “Discover Your Brilliance” framework based on four personal principles: Your tools, your talents, your identity, and your path. “It’s your superpower and your kryptonite,” she said, and everyone needs to investigate those four areas of life to discover their own brilliance.
“I’m not just talking about standing in the spotlight, or having a lot of followers, or maybe you are a genius at Excel,” she said. “But it is how you have a positive impact on the world around you, and it’s also your number one stumbling block if you’re not careful.”
By identifying the tools you have successfully used during your career journey, by recognizing what talents have been the most impactful, how your own identity reflects all the knowledge you’ve gained, and then what about your path inspires you, with those four attributes you can “have a regular practice of going back to that place, going back to that well, and connecting there.”
Her last question to the audience was, “When do you feel most alive? Most lit-up? Most like yourself?” Answering that will lead one to their brilliance, their passion, and to “what fuels you,” she said.
Buckner has an Ed.D. in educational leadership and administration from Georgia Southern University, a Master of Arts in counseling from Webster University, and a Bachelor of Science in sociology from the College of Charleston. Her book, “Disrupting Burnout: The Professional Woman’s Lifeline to Finding Purpose,” published in 2024, “offers simple yet powerful strategies of the heart for lasting transformation.”
