Robert Brown

Michigan State University

https://ced.msu.edu/programs/cced-flint

Biographical Abstracts

Robert Brown is an associate director of the Center for Community and Economic Development 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, a bottom-up way of working with communities that focuses on four foundations:

1. It focuses on community assets and strengths rather than problems and needs.
2. It identifies and mobilizes individual and community assets, skills, and passions.
3. It is community driven—"building communities from the inside out.”
4. It is relationship driven.

He is a core team member of the national Strategic Doing Institute and a certified member of the Strategic Doing faculty. Prior to coming to MSU, Brown worked at United Way of Genesee County, 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.

Brown is a husband and father, a resident of Flint, Michigan, and a board member of WOW Outreach. In 2012, he helped found Neighborhoods Without Borders (NWB), a Flint community-based network that uses an asset-based approach to address community-identified neighborhood issues and their root causes. NWB’s current and ongoing efforts center dismantling systemic and institutional racism in Flint. This is done by understanding and working on White power and privilege and understanding African American history in Flint.

Brown has a master’s degree in public administration from Western Michigan University.

Areas of Expertise

• Asset-based community development
• Facilitation
• Strategic Doing