Lisa Brown

Lisa Brown is currently Vice President & General Counsel of Georgetown University, where she provides legal counsel to the University’s President, Board of Directors, and senior academic and administrative officers; serves in the President’s Cabinet; and mentors first generation college students and students interested in law and social justice. Ms. Brown also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Center for Law and Social Policy, DC Theatre Lab and SMYAL (Supporting and Mentoring Youth Advocates and Leaders). Ms. Brown has spent extensive time in public service. She served in the Administration of President Obama, first as Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary in the White House, and then as Acting Chief Performance Officer at the Office of Management and Budget. She had previously served as Co-Director of Agency Review for the Obama-Biden Transition Project. During the Administration of President Clinton, Ms. Brown began as a career lawyer in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice and then became Counsel to Vice President Gore, where she also served as a member of the Executive Board of the President’s Committee for Employment of People with Disabilities. Between the two administrations, Ms. Brown was Executive Director of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy. Before entering the government, Ms. Brown was a partner at the Washington law firm of Shea & Gardner. Ms. Brown clerked for the Honorable John C. Godbold on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Montgomery, Alabama. Ms. Brown graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a degree in political economy, and earned her law degree from the University of Chicago Law School where she graduated with Honors and served as Editor-in-Chief of the University of Chicago Legal Forum. Ms. Brown lives in Bethesda, Maryland with her husband, Dr. Kevin Cullen, and their son Philip. Her father was a managing partner at Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, a Washington, D.C. firm that her grandfather, W. John Kenney, founded. Kenney was also under secretary of the Navy and the administrator of the Marshall Plan in Europe. Her stepfather was an investment banker who became president of the Chevy Chase Savings Bank in Maryland, but Brown went to boarding school at the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut.