Shermin Kruse is the author of The Calm Inside: A Stoic Guide to Staying Steady (Fair Share Publishing, November 2026), a picture book for children ages 4 to 8 that brings the ancient wisdom of Stoic philosophy to the classroom and the playground. The story follows Marc, a young boy modeled on Marcus Aurelius, through everyday moments as he and his classmates learn to meet big feelings with wisdom, courage, fairness and self-control. The book grew out of Shermin’s TEDx talk of the same name, which has been viewed more than 700,000 times. It comes with an educator guide so teachers and parents can bring its lessons into daily life.

For Shermin, the book is personal. Born in Tehran during a time of war and political upheaval, she began writing poetry in Farsi at age 10 to make sense of the pressures around her. Her family later immigrated to Canada with little more than a few suitcases. The Calm Inside gives children the tools she wishes she’d had: a way to find steadiness inside themselves, whatever is happening around them. She is also a mother of four.

Shermin studied philosophy and neuropsychology at the University of Toronto before earning her law degree at the University of Michigan. She spent 17 years as a partner at Barack Ferrazzano, advising Fortune 500 clients such as LVMH, Google and Walmart on international business and high-stakes negotiations. That work led her to pioneer strategic empathy, which pairs cognitive empathy with strategic action. She explores it further in her book Stoic Empathy: The Roadmap to a Life of Influence, Self-Leadership, and Integrity (Hay House), translated into French, Portuguese, and Korean, and in her writings for Psychology Today.

Shermin is a professor at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, where she teaches stoic empathy negotiations, leadership and global transactions. She is also the author of the textbook Global Transactions and Regulation, which she uses, along with Stoic Empathy, as the student guide for her classes. She is the founder and executive producer of TEDxWrigleyville. She has produced and scripted more than 80 TED and TEDx talks and has given four TEDx talks of her own (more than 1M views), and authored the novel Butterfly Stitching based on the women of her family before and after the Iranian revolution. She speaks frequently on stoicism, empathy and leadership, and her work has appeared on NPR and PBS and in Maxim and Medium. She has founded multiple NGOs, serves on several boards, and is the recipient of multiple humanitarian awards celebrating her dedication to fostering empathy, justice, and human rights.

In Stoic Empathy, Shermin offers a powerful paradigm for navigating life’s complexities by blending cognitive empathy with the resilience of stoic principles. Drawing on neuroscience, philosophy, and her own personal journey, she provides readers young and old with actionable insights into cultivating influence, self-leadership, and emotional regulation.