Elaine M. Brown is an Emmy Award-winning media executive and critically acclaimed author.
Ms. Brown is a former Vice President, Creative Services, at HBO. In that role, she was responsible for on-air promotion, brand image, and content creation; as well as for launching HBO’s Multiplex Channels, which include HBO Family, HBO Signature, HBO Comedy, and HBO Zone; and multi-platform launches, including HBO mobile and HBO On-Demand. She was also responsible for overseeing HBO Latino and on-air promotion for Cinemax.
In addition to being a pioneer of branded content as short-form programming at HBO, Ms. Brown was responsible for the company’s original video installation, which created an all-digital environment within the HBO Retail Store. She also received the 2008 National Public Service Announcements (PSA) Emmy Award for Executive Producing the HBO, Kaiser Foundation, and NBA AIDS PSA with Jamie Foxx and Queen Latifah.
Prior to HBO, Ms. Brown was a Creative Director in Creative Services at Showtime Networks where she was responsible for the network on-air promotion, interstitial content, and branding of original programming. Ms. Brown established a unique identity for all of Showtime’s Original Pictures, Original Pictures for Kids and Original Dramatic Series.
Ms. Brown was inspired to a career in television as a result of a college internship at WBZ-TV in Boston. After graduation, she significant career experience as a writer, segment producer, and editor for ABC-TV, CBS-TV, WPIX-TV, WOR-TV, and ABC-Lifetime. She won a Daytime Emmy® Award for writing for the series “FYI.”
In addition to two Emmys, Ms. Brown has won numerous awards in the broadcast industry, including CTAM, PROMAX/BDA, and New York Festivals, and has been published in Essence magazine. In 2007, Ms. Brown was chosen as one of the Network Journal’s 25 Influential Black Women in Business, and in that same year was honored by William C. Thompson, Jr., the Comptroller of the City of New York, at his annual African American Heritage and Culture event.
Ms. Brown is a member of the Coalition of 100 black Women Bergen/Passaic Chapter, and is professionally affiliated with NAMIC, CTAM, and WICT.
Ms. Brown is also a published author. Her most recent work is a collaboration on a non-fiction leadership book titled The Little Black Book of Success: Laws of Leadership Success for Black (Random House: March 2010). She also published two novels, the critically acclaimed Lemon City (Random House: August 2004) and its sequel, Playing by the Rules (Random House: June 2006). Ms. Brown won the In Literary Award from Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority for her literary achievements.
Ms. Brown received her undergraduate degree from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. She completed post-graduate programs at the NAMIC Executive Leadership Development Program held at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, and at the 2008 CTAM Executive Management Program at Harvard Business School.
In addition to supportive family members, who drove home the belief that she could do anything she set out to do, Ms. Brown credits her advancement to a dynamic combination of relationships, never saying “no” to an opportunity, and being in the right place at the right time.
