Courtney Brown has spent 20+ years working on the frontlines of crises, both domestic and international. His career started in the Balkans wars of the mid 1990s where he worked in refugee camps for Kosovar refugees. From there his work took him to Afghanistan, Iraq, Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Haiti, Burma, Japan, Syria, Lebanon, and numerous other countries managing humanitarian assistance response teams delivering life-saving assistance amidst the most challenging of environments.

Brown has worked extensively in the public sector, where he spent 15+ years working for USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) managing humanitarian and stabilization programs globally. His most recent tour with USAID was with OTI as the Syria Country Representative, managing a $250m program from 2013-2017 that focused on, among other things, expanding the life-saving work of the White Helmets in Syria. Brown has worked extensively in multiple international humanitarian non-governmental organizations, most recently Global Communities, where he was the Director of the Office of Humanitarian Assistance. Currently, Brown is the Managing Director for Proximity International, a social enterprise designed to amplify the voices of quiet demographic groups during periods of crises. Prior to Proximity, Brown was the CEO for RedRose, a humanitarian-focused fintech company dedicated to creating transparent cash flows within conflict settings to reduce the potential for money laundering and/or terrorist financing. Lastly, Brown worked as part of an uber-committed team of individuals to support the evacuation of 768 Afghan families from Afghanistan during the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August 2021.

Brown has a BS in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has a masters degree in Developmental Economics from the London School of Economics and a second masters degree in Water Engineering and Environmental Health from Loughborough University.

Brown is managing a new initiative for Truman focused on crisis preparedness that assembles public, private, and civil society actors to share lessons learned, map resources, and create a playbook that can help coordinate actors prior to the onset of the next crisis. Truman’s goal is to establish better communications, awareness, and coordination between public, private, and civil society actors prior to the next disaster in order to catalyze more efficient assistance flows and improve protection of civilians.