Alice L. Brown

Alice L. Brown, the head of Sojourner, Tubman, Wells & Co. Consulting, is an attorney with extensive experience in social justice philanthropy and civil rights litigation and advocacy. Early in her career as a litigator and advocate at the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Legal Defense and Educational Fund, her work and publications addressed the legal aspects of housing conditions and environmental degradation in African American communities. Later she served in leadership positions in the Ford Foundation, as a programme officer, Deputy Representative and then as the Foundation’s Representative for the Office for Southern Africa based in Johannesburg. A graduate of New York University School of Law (JD) and Dartmouth College (BA), she has been a Visiting Adjunct Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Law, a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program, and a Visiting Fellow at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. In addition to acting as a trustee of the NMF, Ms Brown serves as the Chair of the board of Section27, a prominent public interest law centre, and is an independent expert and member of the Constitutionalism Fund Committee, a South African philanthropic fund that supports social justice organisations and their sustainability.

From 2013 - 2016, Ms. Brown convened the annual Public Interest Law Gathering and she previously served on the boards of Section27, a highly respected South African public interest law centre, Corruption Watch, Jacana Literary Foundation and Keystone Accountability (UK). She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Institute of Directors in Southern Africa. Her consultancy assignments have included work for, amongst others, the Legal Resources Centre (South Africa), TrustAfrica (Senegal), the International Senior Lawyers Project (NY/London) and the Medtronic Foundation (Minnesota).

Ms. Brown served nearly 20 years of leadership at the Ford Foundation, as a human rights program officer in its New York headquarters and as a program officer, Deputy Representative and then as the Foundation’s Representative for the Office for Southern Africa based in Johannesburg. During this period, she engaged in grant making in support of crucial issues under the rubrics of, amongst others, promoting human rights, social justice, the rule of law and transformation and diversity.

Earlier in her career, Ms. Brown spent five years as a litigator and advocate at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), where she addressed some of the most intractable civil rights problems in the U.S. Her work and publications addressed legal aspects of housing conditions and environmental degradation in African American communities. Prior to her tenure with LDF, Ms. Brown had the honor of serving as a law clerk of the late Honorable A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., a prominent and distinguished U.S. federal court judge, historian and civil rights advocate.

She is a former board member of the South Africa - United States Fulbright Commission and an alumna of Common Purpose South Africa. In addition, Ms. Brown has been a Visiting Adjunct Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Law, a Visiting Fellow of the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program, and a Visiting Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.

New York University, School of Law, J.D., Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Fellow
Dartmouth College, B.A., in History