Triple Bear Dr. Halle Matula Brown and Double Bear Dr. Jonathan “JB” Brown grew up in the same city, but it wasn’t until years later on Mercer University’s Atlanta campus that their paths finally crossed. They shared a desire to help others through the counseling profession, and now they’ve built a life together.
The Browns both grew up in Dublin and just missed going to high school together, since Halle started at the school right after JB graduated.
JB knew he was interested in a career that would allow him to support people in times of need, but he wasn’t sure in what capacity. He recalled how counselors, clergy and others had helped him after loved ones had passed away earlier in his life. As he went through his undergraduate studies in psychology at Brewton-Parker College in Mount Vernon, he realized he felt more connected to the field of counseling because it would allow him to understand human behavior while also working long term with clients.
JB graduated with his undergraduate degree in 2013 and joined the first cohort of the master’s program in clinical rehabilitation counseling in Mercer’s College of Professional Advancement on the Atlanta campus, which he completed in 2016.
Watching “Criminal Minds” as a kid, Halle became interested in psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder and saw how treatment options were limited for this population. She majored in psychology on Mercer’s Macon campus and had the opportunity to work with female clients in the juvenile justice system during an internship.
“Being in that kind of environment, there’s a lot of systemic issues that keeps you from treating those individuals, so that kind of turned me off of that, but it made me fall in love with treating clients in general with severe mental health issues,” said Halle, who completed her undergraduate degree in 2017.
This internship experience took Halle down the counseling path, rather than psychology, and to the College of Professional Advancement’s master’s program in clinical mental health counseling, which she completed in 2020. The desire to train future counselors led both JB and Halle to then pursue a Ph.D. in counselor education and supervision through the college.
Halle had just entered the master’s program and JB was in the Ph.D. program when they first crossed paths at the Administration and Conference Center. Both residential Atlanta students, Halle was working in the student success center one evening when JB, a senior graduate resident assistant, came into the building to help set up for an event. JB said he knew he needed to meet Halle, and he struck up a conversation and invited her to the event he was helping with.
Halle said JB helped her navigate the master’s program and the process of getting into the Ph.D. program.
“It was nice to have somebody that understood and was there to go through it with me,” she said.
JB said he loved having someone to talk to who shared his interests in mental health, behavior and psychology. People used to call him “Mr. Mercer” because of how active he was on the Atlanta campus, and that involvement opened the door for him to meet his future wife.
“Everyone gets told when they go to school, ‘You get out what you put in,’ and, ‘Make the most of it.’ If I didn’t actually take that to heart and do it, I wouldn’t have met Halle. So I use that as an example to reinforce to people that you go to college for education, but (you need to) invest yourself in the experience.”
In spring 2023, JB and Halle defended their dissertations minutes apart on the same day — which happened to be JB’s birthday.
“It was like finally something was coming to a conclusion together as partners,” Halle said. “We knew that kind of marked the last step in our lives before we wanted to do other things like have kids and move forward in our careers. It was really nice to be there, and it also helped me be less anxious in general when he was around.”
The couple said Mercer was like home and a family to them, and they always felt supported, accepted and cared for by their peers and professors.
JB and Halle got married on Sept. 2, 2023, and had their son, D’Andrew Jamere, about a year later. The Browns work for Southern Live Oak Wellness in Atlanta, Halle as director of residential mental health for adults and JB as director of residential mental health for adolescents.
In these roles, they direct and supervise clinical staff — including primary therapists, case managers and intake coordinators — for their patient population and manage clinical programming and operations of the facilities, Halle said.
“I enjoy doing the individual work with clients where you get to see not only their symptoms decrease but also you get to be with them in their most human vulnerable experience and see them come out the other side,” Halle said. “But I also like developing my team and the aspect of directing and facilitating a program to better help serve underserved populations.”
JB said he gets to see both clinicians and clients grow, and having Halle in his corner makes the work easier. Since they’re in the same field, they can share frustrations and challenges without having to explain the backstories and context.
“It’s just kind of, ‘I get ya,’” JB said. “It’s really good to have someone that I can talk to about it and also see the current trends and what’s working that’s led people to treatment, so also we know how we want to approach raising our son.”
The Browns are also adjunct counseling professors for Mercer, and they hope to one day create their own residential program providing different levels of care for clients with severe mental illness.
