Career
After his first year at Yale, he and his wife, Linda A. Mason, co-directed Land Bridge, a famine relief program on the Cambodia-Thailand border. Working under the auspices of CARE and UNICEF, the program served as many as 25,000 people a day and was the largest emergency food distribution effort ever attempted. [3] He then returned to Yale, earning a Masters in Public and Private Management in 1982. [5] He and Mason wrote a book about their experiences in Cambodia, Rice, Rivalry, and Politics. [3]
After graduating, Brown took a job with Boston management consulting firm, Bain and Company, but left in January 1985 to co-direct famine relief efforts in Sudan for Save the Children. The innovative program developed by Brown and Mason established many local food distribution centers, rather than a few centralized ones. [3]
Returning to Boston, Brown and Mason co-founded Bright Horizons, which provided on-site child care for client-company employees, in 1986. Under their leadership, the company grew into a publicly traded company which currently employs 33,000 people (2019). [2] [6] Brown served as chief executive officer until January 2002. [7] He and Mason also co-founded the Horizons Initiative, now Horizons for Homeless Children, which provide services for homeless children, and the Bright Horizons Foundation for Children, which creates safe, enriching, and nurturing spaces in homeless shelters, domestic violence shelters, and other agencies. In July, 2012 Brown assumed the role of Chairman of the Board for Boston After School and Beyond. He is the recipient of the White House's Ron Brown Award for Corporate Leadership and the Ernst & Young/USA Today Entrepreneur of the Year Award. [8]
Berklee
Brown assumed the presidency of Berklee College of Music in 2004. [7] He is the third president of the college and the first non-member of the Berk family. [7] A music enthusiast and avocational drummer, Brown had produced award-winning CDs of children's music featuring Ziggy Marley and Arlo Guthrie, among others, as a fund-raiser for the Bright Horizons Foundation for Children. [7] Under his leadership, Berklee has achieved successive record enrollments and has also grown its online educational offerings through Berklee Online, becoming the world’s largest online music institution. This includes massive open online courses, and online undergraduate, graduate, and certificate programs. [9] [10] Brown also expanded the college’s reach to attract students from more than 100 countries, and created Berklee's Presidential Scholars and Africa Scholars programs to provide full scholarships to talented musicians. [11] Since he became president, the college has also initiated educational institutes that offer focused areas of study, including Africana Studies, the Berklee Global Jazz Institute, student founded Jazz Revelation Records, Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship (ICE), Effortless Mastery Institute, American Roots Music, Popular Music Institute (BPMI), Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, and Mediterranean Music Institute. [12] [13] [14] Berklee’s City Music Program, which provides free music education to underserved youth, has expanded the Berklee City Music Network, which has partners across the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. [15] During Brown’s tenure, Berklee has instituted a more selective admissions policy. All applicants are required to have an audition and interview, an effort that sends admissions staff to cities around the globe on the Berklee World Tour searching for talented musicians. [16] Under Brown’s leadership, the amount of scholarship and financial aid available to Berklee students has increased by over 500%, growing from $9 million to over $70 million annually. [4]
Brown has led the college to augment the student experience by establishing semester-abroad programs and by expanding the Boston campus through the construction of a new 16-story facility at 160 Massachusetts Avenue with dorm rooms, practice rooms, common areas, a fitness center, a dining hall/performance venue, and a music production complex. [17] Brown negotiated with the city of Valencia, Spain, and the Generalitat Valenciana to create a Berklee campus in the Spanish city that offered the college’s first graduate degree programs as well as a study abroad program. [18]
Brown launched the institution’s first-ever capital campaign, Giant Steps in 2011, which raised $54.5 million. [19] The institution’s second campaign, Soundbreaking, closed in 2019, raising over $160 million. [20]
In 2016, he oversaw Berklee's merger with the Boston Conservatory. The merger created an institution with comprehensive and dynamic training for music, dance, theater, and related professions. [21] In 2017, a landmark public-private-nonprofit partnership brought together Berklee, the City of New York, and private donor to revitalize the historic Power Station recording studio in Hell’s Kitchen, which the college has re-named Power Station at BerkleeNYC. [22]
On October 17, 2019, Brown announced that he will be stepping down as Berklee’s president in May of 2021. [4] [23]
In the spring of 2022, Brown founded the Salt Lick Incubator, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and its associated YouTube channel, Salt Lick Sessions, to support diverse, emerging musicians with grants and collaborative opportunities to bolster their careers. [24] [25]
Massachusetts is a U.S. state in New England. The music of Massachusetts has developed actively since it was first colonized by Britain. The city of Boston is an especially large part of the state's present music scene, which includes several genres of rock, as well as classical, folk, and hip hop music.
Berklee College of Music is a private music college in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known for the study of jazz and modern American music, it also offers college-level courses in a wide range of contemporary and historic styles, including rock, hip hop, reggae, salsa, heavy metal and bluegrass.
Bright Horizons is a United States–based child-care provider and is the largest provider of employer-sponsored child care. It also provides back-up child care and elder care, tuition program management, education advising, and student loan repayment programs. It is headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts.
Michael R. Eisenson is a managing director and co-chairman of Charlesbank Capital Partners, LLC, a private equity investment firm based in Boston and New York. Eisenson co-founded the firm in 1998 and served as its CEO until 2017. Charlesbank raised its most recent fund, Charlesbank Equity Fund IX, in 2017, with $2.75 billion of investor commitments.
Danilo Pérez is a Panamanian pianist, composer, educator, and a social activist. His music is a blend of Panamanian roots with elements of Latin American folk music, jazz, European impressionism, African, and other musical heritages that promote music as a multi-dimensional bridge between people. He has released eleven albums as a leader, and appeared on many recordings as a side man, which have earned him critical acclaim, numerous accolades, Grammy Awards wins and nominations. He is a recipient of the United States Artists Fellowship, and the 2009 Smithsonian Legacy Award.
Phillips Elder Wilson, Jr. is a jazz trombonist, arranger, and teacher. He has taught at the Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and New England Conservatory.
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There are various types of music schools in the United States. These include both pre-college and college-level schools, both private and public. College-level schools can be categorized as independent conservatories, or as music schools of larger universities or liberal arts colleges.
Lee Eliot Berk was President and namesake of the Berklee College of Music from 1979 to 2004. Under the younger Berk’s leadership, the college underwent significant changes. Berklee expanded its curriculum to create new majors, including Film Scoring, Music Production and Engineering, Music Synthesis, Songwriting, Music Business/Management, and Music Therapy. Educational applications of music technology expanded, the college administration was reorganized, more student services were added, and non-music academic offerings increased. In 1992, he established the Berklee International Network that includes music schools with a shared mission around the globe.
Lawrence Berk was the founder of Berklee College of Music, a pianist, composer and arranger, and educator.
Vuk Kulenovic was a Bosnian composer and teacher based in Boston, Massachusetts. He taught counterpoint, orchestration and directed study at Berklee College of Music. He composed and had commissions from around the world. His influences were wide-ranging, including jazz, Indian ragas, Balkan folk music, rock and many other contemporary styles. He wrote over 100 works for symphony orchestra, solo instruments, chamber ensembles, choral and vocal pieces, ballet, and scores for film and stage music.
Darren Barrett is a Canadian jazz musician who won the 1997 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, and is a professor at Berklee College of Music.
Linda Mason is an American charity executive and chairwoman and co-founder of Bright Horizons Family Solutions.
Rimon School of Music is a contemporary music school in Ramat Hasharon, Israel. It is Israel's largest independent professional school for advanced study of jazz, R&B, bebop, rock, and pop music. Many of its graduates have become well-known music professionals and performers throughout the world.
Dave Kusek is an American business executive, music educator, author, and software developer known for his work in the music industry. After working as chief engineer at Star Instruments in the 1970s, in 1980 he became the founding CEO of the music software company Passport Designs. With Passport he helped develop Master Tracks and Encore, and also co-developed software and hardware that utilized the then newly introduced MIDI interface.
Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol is a Grammy nominated Turkish-American composer and CMES Harvard University fellow who is a jazz pianist and singer that also performs a number of Near and Middle Eastern instruments as well as the keyboardless synthesizer Continuum Fingerboard and the SANLIKOL Renaissance 17, a digital microtonal keyboard designed and conceived by himself. The Boston Globe calls Sanlıkol's music “colorful, fanciful, full of rhythmic life, and full of feeling" and "not touristy, but rather sophisticated, informed, internalized”, “...and he (Sanlıkol) is another who could play decisive role in music’s future in the world.” He is currently a full-time faculty member at New England Conservatory's Music History & Musicology Department and is the director of the Intercultural Institute at New England Conservatory.
Panos Andreas Panay is a Cyprus-born entrepreneur, executive and author. Panay currently holds the post of President of the Recording Academy alongside CEO Harvey Mason Jr.. Previously he was the Senior Vice President of Global Strategy & Innovation at Berklee College of Music. He founded Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship, and founded the online platform Sonicbids, which was later acquired by Backstage Magazine. Panay is a Fellow at MIT Connection Science at the MIT Media Lab, and also founded the Open Music Initiative.
Steven Feifke is an American jazz pianist, composer, orchestrator, and arranger.
Berklee Online, founded in 2001, is the private, nonprofit online school of Berklee College of Music in Boston that offers music courses, certificates, bachelor’s, and master’s degree programs to students worldwide. Berklee Online is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE). Since its inception, Berklee Online has taught more than 75,000 students from 164 countries. It’s the largest online music school in the world with more than 18,000 annual enrollments in credit-based courses and more than 3.1 million enrollments in massive open online courses through Coursera, EdX, and Kadenze. As of 2021, Berklee Online has nearly 250 courses and instructors.
