Chris Brown comes to the MW after a two-year tenure as the commissioner of the Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association. As the Chief Executive Officer of the nine-member Division III conference, Brown was the 10th leader in the 136-year history of the league. He ensured compliance, cost controls and revenue growth by overseeing the operational, financial and legal affairs of the conference.
Prior to his time at the MIAA, Brown was a senior associate athletics director at the University of Delaware. Before that, he was a compliance consultant at the Great Northeast Athletic Conference from 2018-22 and worked at the NCAA national office as an associate director of academic and membership affairs from 2014-20. Brown spent more than a year at Southeast Missouri State University as an assistant director of compliance.
A consultant for the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics since 2020, Brown has also held a variety of teaching positions, as he has served as an adjunct professor at Boston College; a lecturer in sport management, Chief Diversity Officer, and graduate teaching assistant at University of Kansas; and an adjunct instructor at Spalding University and North Central College.
The Colorado Springs, Colorado, native earned a history degree from Colorado State University before adding a master’s in health and human performance from Austin Peay and a doctorate in sport management from Kansas.