Venessa Brown, PhD is the retired Associate Athletic Director and Chief Diversity Officer for SIUE Intercollegiate Athletics.  She was the previous Associate Chancellor and Chief Diversity Officer and Associate Provost for Institutional Diversity and Inclusion at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) with a tenured faculty appointment as professor in the department of social work. She also served as executive director of the SIUE East Saint Louis Center (ESLC). 

Dr. Brown began her academic career in 1993 as an assistant professor of sociology and social work in the Department of Social Sciences at Greenville University (GU). Following in her commitment to accredited social work programs, Dr. Brown accepted a position at SIUE in 1995 as an assistant professor to start the Masters in Social Work (MSW) program. She was tenured and promoted in 2001, full professor in 2006 and department chair from 2006 – 2007. In this role, she contributed to the overall success of the BSW/MSW program being fully accredited.

Dr. Brown is a native of Missouri, earned her B.A. in Social Work and Psychology at GC in 1983, MSW from Atlanta University School of Social Work in 1985 and a Ph.D. in Social Work with a Concentration in Statistics and Computer Science from Clark Atlanta University in 1994. After attending her master’s program she worked for the State of Georgia. 

Dr. Brown is nationally and internationally known for her commitment to public child welfare. She has also been recognized for teaching and international activities. Her past students have become leaders in the region. She is the author of “Child Welfare Case Studies” published by Allyn & Bacon and A Promising Reality: Race Class and Culture in Cuba by Peter Lang.  She is working on a manuscript with Dr. Houston on Community-Based Child Welfare with Multicultural Families. 

Over the years, she has been a principle investigator on state and federally funded grants. Under her leadership as the Executive Director of the SIUE (ESLC) she oversaw grant funded programs totaling approximately $12 million. She also secured a $1million dollar cash gift to the University to open a state of the art STEM Technology Lab for the Charter High School and later $3.5 million cash gift for scholarships and continue the STEM work at the SIUE Charter High Schol.