
Robert Brown
2024
Michigan State University
Associate Director, Center for Community and Economic Development
https://ced.msu.edu/programs/cced-flint

Biographical Abstracts
Bob Brown is an Associate Director of University-Community Partnerships at Michigan State University Outreach and Engagement where he works to connect researchers and community members in partnerships that address critical community concerns. He champions asset-based community development (ABCD), or asset-based community-driven development as it is sometimes called, a bottom-up way of working with communities that focuses on four foundations:
- It focuses on community assets and strengths rather than problems and needs.
- It identifies and mobilizes individual and community assets, skills and passions.
- It is community driven – ‘building communities from the inside out.’
- It is relationship driven.
He is also certified by the Strategic Doing Institute as a member of the national Strategic Doing Faculty. Prior to working at MSU, Bob worked in the United Way System at the United Way of Genesee County, the United Way of Muskegon County, and United Way of Michigan. He has also worked in Michigan’s aging network and Michigan’s food bank network.
Bob Brown is a husband and father, is a resident of the great city of Flint and a Board Member of WOW Outreach. Bob is also a core team member of the national Strategic Doing Institute, and helped to found Neighborhoods Without Borders (NWB). Formed in 2012, NWB is a Flint community-based network that uses an asset-based approach to work on identified Flint neighborhood issues and their root causes. NWB’s current and ongoing efforts centers on working to dismantle systemic and institutional racism. We do this by understanding and working on White power and privilege and understanding African American history in Flint.
Bob has a master’s degree in public administration from Western Michigan University.
Areas of Expertise
- Asset-based community development
- Facilitation
- Strategic Doing