Her journey has come full circle, transforming her from a student into a mentor who passionately gives back to the program.

The P-TECH program is a successful educational model designed to equip young people (9-14) with the academic, technical, and professional skills needed for 21st-century jobs.

Brown is a leader in continuous improvement, robotic process automation, software product introduction, and customer support. Her current goal is to develop creative solutions for organizational challenges as a solution architect or lead artificial intelligence (AI) architect.

She also aspires to hold prestigious positions such as IBM Fellow, senior location executive, Master Inventor, or university department head.

Brown received her doctorate in leadership studies from a historically Black college and university in December. Graduating with her doctorate was one of her most challenging yet rewarding experiences.

Although she is still trying to fully understand its significance, she feels inspired by the pride expressed by her family, friends, mentees, and mentors.

During a recent family reunion, one of her elderly uncles called her over and asked her to sit next to him. He said nothing except, "I just wanted to know what it felt like to sit next to a doctor."

Although Brown does not have specific professional expectations, she understands that her achievement will open many doors.

One of the most impactful things she learned during her P-TECH experience was trying and never giving up. She brought that can-do spirit into her career at IBM.

At P-TECH, she often had to take classes or complete projects and stretch assignments she was thrown into and had to learn, adapt, and grow. That is very much the same at IBM.

It also helps that while simultaneously being a high school student, a college student, and a student-athlete, she learned a lot about prioritizing her schedule, which comes in handy when working on various automation projects or juggling different volunteer roles at IBM.

Her love for robotics began with a track and field injury. She tore a ligament and was told that she could not run for a while. During that time, she started to attend the robotics club meetings at her high school. It became a newfound passion, and she went to the robotics and trebuchet clubs more than track practice once she was healed.

"I just loved coming up with a solution that went beyond human capabilities, building it with my team, and seeing how all the different components come together for one central goal," she said.

Brown ran cross country, indoor, and outdoor track for almost two and half years and then went on to run collegiate cross country for two years. She chose business analytics in college because she knew she didn't want to be super technical.

She started as a general business major but during her junior year at William Peace University, her advisor started a business analytics program. She signed up.

Brown's master's degree is in information technology from North Carolina A&T State University. She joined IBM as a full-time employee in 2018 as a distributed software product manager.

Before becoming a full-time employee, she had two internships with IBM: one in her junior year of high school as a research intern in Manhattan and a procurement intern in Raleigh, NC, during the summer of her junior year at William Peace University.

Some of her most recent appointments at IBM include a robotics process automation leader. "I like to say I make people fall in love with their job even more because I automate things. My role is to listen to the organization's problems and develop solutions using robotic process automation that will help make things more efficient or reduce the working time or manual effort of our org members," she explained.

Her career journey at IBM has been unique and unexpected.

She did not plan any of her career moves but organically transitioned into them based on professional development, learning, and passions at the time.

Brown started as a product manager and, during that role, didn't like having to count the number of characters within the name of a product. So, she started learning robotic process automation and decided to build a program that would do it for her.

Then, she built a program that would do something else about her job that she didn't like. It transitioned into a full-time role, and she became the team's organization's robotic process automation developer.

While being the robotic process automation developer, she was in a robotic process automation guild and got to work with the RPA leader. That individual went on to a different opportunity at a certain point, and she asked her manager if she could be considered for the role.

Brown became the organization's robotic process automation and continuous improvement leader. While in that position, her manager brought on P-TECH co-ops or interns, and she became the organization's P-TECH team lead.