Brandy Brown

I wanted to get into an industry that allowed me to help people, and I really wanted to focus on finding ways that I can support communities, especially disadvantaged communities, in different recovery efforts. I had an opportunity to get into FEMA where I learned and built the foundational skills needed to be successful, and eventually started my own individual consulting practice where I worked with these same communities, being more of an advocate for them and ensuring that they don't get taken advantage of. I've been independently doing consulting work for the last 5 years with a team of myself and another person. We specifically work with small rural Texas municipalities and also work with other small communities across the nation, operating in about 10 different states. We focus primarily on disaster recovery programs such as FEMA public assistance and individual assistance. Lately, I've been personally more ingrained in local work here in Texas given the energy renaissance movement with data centers, so a lot of my focus has shifted to economic development in rural Texas. I got into economic development after connecting with a county judge at one of the counties where I was working as a political advisor for a candidate running for District 10 for Congress. We had a conversation about where he saw his county going, and I pitched a couple ideas to him. He loved the idea and loved the fact that I was thinking very local and that my entire approach was really geared towards what was best for the people, and not just what made money. My strategy is more of an upstream strategy where we'll basically strategize your entire plan, execute it, be involved in the development phase, identify all the technology partners and groups that need to be involved to execute a project, and go after whatever grant money is needed. We also handle all the community engagement pieces to ensure that before we bring something into the area, the community is all on board with it as well. I'm also building a new way of working through my platform Skip the Line, which I created a few months ago, where instead of sending resumes, you directly connect with a hiring manager through conversation, and based on those conversations can determine whether or not you might have a chance to land a role at their organization.