​​​​Jessie Brown serves as senior vice president and chief of staff at ACE, where she leads strategic initiatives across the Council. She oversees the Office of the President, as well as the departments of Membership, Communications and Marketing, and Public Affairs.

Brown joined ACE from the National Association of College and University Attorneys, where she served as deputy chief executive officer and executive director of legal resources. In that role, she led much of NACUA's programming and practice work, including developing a suite of programs to assist campuses responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prior to NACUA, Brown served as the national senior director of legal affairs at Year Up, Inc., a national workforce development organization focused on supporting young adults in reaching their career and higher education potential by providing intensive skills training and experiential learning.

Brown served as senior counsel in the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education in the Obama Administration from 2015–17, during which time she worked on a wide range of equity and anti-discrimination initiatives. Brown also previously spent several years at ACE, serving as associate general counsel from 2009–15. She began her legal career as a law fellow in New York University’s Office of General Counsel.

Brown graduated from Harvard Law School with a JD, and she graduated magna cum laude, with honors, from Brown University with a BA in political science and Hispanic studies.