Eric Brown

About

Eric is the principal of Brownbridge Strategies, a strategy and communications consulting firm in San Francisco.

For almost eleven years, he was the communications director for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, California. In addition to creating strategies for the foundation’s own organizational communications, he worked closely with the foundation’s programs and grantees, helping to design and implement communications strategies in global development, reproductive health, environment, education, philanthropy, and the performing arts. He was a member of the senior staff, reporting to the president, and worked closely with the foundation’s board of directors. His work has taken him across the globe and has given him the opportunity to help nonprofit organizations in China, India, Africa, and Europe. 

Before working at the Hewlett Foundation, he spent five years working in the environmental field, where he was the communications director at the Center for a New American Dream, a nonprofit organization in the Washington, D.C. area. Prior to that, he was press secretary and speechwriter for Congresswoman Nydia M. Velazquez, a member of Congress from New York City. As a political media consultant, he produced television and radio ads for U.S. Senate, Congressional, and statewide campaigns for Murphy Putnam Media. Brown was also a contributing author of Take Back Your Time (2002, Berrett-Koehler).

Brown first joined the Board of The Communications Network in 2006 and served as Board Chair from 2009-2011. He has also served on the boards of directors of the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers and the Biodiversity Project.

He hold a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California at Berkeley, and recently earned a Master of Liberal Arts degree from Stanford University, where his thesis research examined the presidency of Rwandan leader Paul Kagame.