Dr. Lauren Brown is the SCI Research Scientist. She also teaches courses in the USC Department of Social Change and Innovation. She strives to create a collaborative learning environment that supports and stimulates critical thinking and analysis, problem solving, capacity building, and synthesis of social work principles and values.
Brown’s work and research focus on social justice issues. She has policy, planning, evaluation and management experience in the public sector. As principal of Brown & Associates, Inc., she provides assistance to public and private, nonprofit human service and social justice organizations in policy analysis and formation; program evaluation; proposal writing; program and strategic planning; multicultural program development; advocacy; community organization and outreach; board development; resource development; training; facilitation; and campaign development.
In academia, Brown has administered graduate-level programs, created curricula and policies and procedures, as well as managed staff and adjunct faculty. She has helped establish the standards for mastery of core subjects and students’ learning objectives, as well as determine the selection and sequence of learning experiences and design of assessment and evaluation tools.
She has consulted on projects to improve the social welfare of the disabled, single teenage mothers, foster care and inner-city youth, and children zero to five years old. She has also worked on projects to reduce the occurrence of racial, gender and age employment discrimination. In addition, Brown has participated in place-based initiatives to increase the capacity of community residents to raise healthy children ready to enter kindergarten and assisted in the development of strategies to increase the participation of racial and ethnic minorities in the labor force and in politics.
Brown has been selected to participate in several leadership programs sponsored by the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and the Liberty Hill Foundation and was invited to interview at the Obama White House for a political appointment to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She is also a member of numerous organizations, including the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management and the National Association of Black Social Workers.
