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Tina Brown, alumna of the Black Corporate Board Readiness (BCBR) program at the Leavey Executive Center, comes by her fix-it mindset naturally. 

Growing up in Texas, she loved math because it quite literally gave her the chance to solve problems. Her mother encouraged this love by taking her to science fairs and math clubs. And her serial-entrepreneur dad — who owned rental houses and did much of the repair and renovation on them himself, with Brown tagging along as assistant — gave her a related bit of advice: Never leave something worse than you found it.

Those early foundations kept Brown engaged and interested in STEM, an area in which women, and especially women of color, are underrepresented. But it might be a moment in high school that sealed her career path.

“In the 9th grade there was a career day,” says Brown, now president and co-founder of Vector Holding Group in Emeryville, “and this Black woman came to class. I thought she was so fabulous and smart, and she told us she was an engineer. She said, ‘Hey, you love math and science. You can be like me.’”

The words proved to be prophetic. Brown earned an electrical engineering degree and worked as an engineer for several years. When she realized she also had a knack for business problem-solving, she earned an MBA and started leading operations for tech companies, working in semiconductors and cybersecurity. Whether helping a company think through supply chain roadblocks or ways to improve customer service scores, her work always comes back to that fix-it mentality.

Another keyword became just as important for Brown over the years: service. Fixing problems is all about service, either for customers, for companies or for employees. So as a natural evolution of her career, Brown sought a new way to serve: boards.

Open to Possibilities

Like many business leaders, Brown’s first exposure to board service came in the form of nonprofit work. In the 2000s, she sat on the board for Cinnamon Girl, a nonprofit in Oakland that connects young students with accomplished women of color from various fields. Because of her own inspiring experience in high school, the mission was near and dear to her heart.

Her first exposure to corporate board work came a bit later, when she was running investor relations for the company Sphere 3D. She had to present to the board every quarter, so she was becoming intimately familiar with how boards operated.

Still, she did not imagine herself serving on a corporate board at the time. “When I think about why, I actually think it has to do with representation, which is kind of what BCBR is all about. I think oftentimes, if you don't see yourself — if you don't see someone with your background, or if you don't see someone similar to you in those positions — you don't automatically think of yourself in those positions.” She points out there were no women on the board she regularly presented to, for example.

Ultimately, though, she knew her fix-it mindset and service mentality could be assets for a board. She knew she could leave a company better than she found it. Through her own professional network, she found out about BCBR and went through the program as part of its third cohort of students. The experience was invaluable, in part because of learning with a group of accomplished professionals and further expanding her personal and professional network, but also because of the core lessons in leadership the program imparts. 

“I think the biggest lesson at first was just how different the corporate board governance role is from a nonprofit board role, or even from being an operator in a company,” Brown says. Nonprofits often are small and scrappy “all hands on deck” situations, for example, so board members might end up helping with everything from marketing to fundraising. 

By their nature, corporate boards need to be hands-off. “It's actually not me running this business,” Brown says of the role. “I'm representing the shareholders and the stakeholders. I’m providing governance to make sure that the company is being a good steward of investments.”

During and after her BCBR education, Brown has served on the board for the global tech company Tandberg Data. Her skills as an observant listener, strong collaborator and smart asker of questions — all honed at BCBR — have come in handy. She also has pursued another nonprofit board role with the American Leadership Forum of Silicon Valley, which encourages and supports diverse leaders.

Just as that engineer at career day presented Brown with a career option she hadn’t considered, BCBR changed her path, too. She credits the program with not only bringing her up to speed on the logistics of board service, but also with giving her the courage to launch her own company in the form of Vector.

“I would say BCBR opened up my eyes to all the different opportunities there are from a career option perspective,” she says.