Martha Beck

Martha Nibley Beck (born November 29, 1962) is an American author, life coach, and speaker who specializes in helping individuals and groups achieve greater levels of personal and professional success. She holds three degrees, a BA, MA, and Ph.D., from Harvard University. Beck is the daughter of deceased LDS Church scholar and apologist Hugh Nibley. 

She received national attention after the publication in 2005 of her best-seller, Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith, in which she recounts her experiences of surviving sexual abuse. In addition to authoring several books, Beck is a columnist for O, The Oprah Magazine. Martha Nibley was born in Provo, Utah, in 1962, the seventh of eight children of Hugh Nibley and Phyllis Nibley, and raised LDS in a prominent Utah family. 

Her father was a professor at Brigham Young University. She received a BA degree in East Asian studies, along with an MA and a Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University. During her academic career, Beck worked as a research associate at Harvard Business School, studying career paths and life-course changes. Before becoming a life coach, she taught sociology, social psychology, organizational behavior, and business management at Harvard and the American Graduate School of International Management. 

She has published academic books and articles on a variety of social science and business topics. Her non-academic books include New York Times bestsellers Expecting Adam and Leaving the Saints, as well as Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live, Steering by Starlight, and Finding Your Way in a Wild New World: Reclaiming Your True Nature, and The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self.

Beck has also been a contributing editor for popular magazines, including Real Simple and Redbook, and has been a columnist for O, the Oprah Magazine since July 2001. Beck is the founder of Martha Beck, Inc., which offers Wayfinder Life Coach Training and other courses based on Beck’s philosophies. Beck met John Christen Beck, a fellow Mormon from Utah, during her undergraduate studies at Harvard. They married in the LDS Salt Lake Temple on June 21, 1983, in Salt Lake City, Utah, and they eventually had three children together.

After the birth of their second child, Adam, who had been diagnosed with Down Syndrome prior to his birth, Beck returned with her husband and children to Utah to be closer to family and support. Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic is Beck's story about her decision to give birth to and raise Adam.

In 1990, soon after the birth of her third child, Beck, as a part-time faculty member at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, she taught a course on the sociology of gender in the Department of Social Science. During her time as a part-time faculty member at BYU, five Mormon scholars were excommunicated from the LDS Church as a consequence of public writings that were deemed critical of the church; the group became known as the September Six. 

She and her husband, John Beck, also made critical public statements about both the ex-communications and other church and BYU matters, which led to first John, then Martha herself, leaving the LDS Church in 1993. Since leaving the LDS Church, both Martha Beck and her now ex-husband subsequently came out publicly as gay. In 2003, Beck separated from her husband, divorcing him in 2004. She now lives with her family in Pennsylvania.