About that odd title: Each of the three target cities has its own market leader, essentially a regional president charged with helping the operating groups cooperate.
How it resembles his first job out of college (as a Navy flight officer): Brown went to Boston University on a Navy scholarship, studying international relations and geography. He graduated in 1988, completed his military training and served in the Navy for six years: three on an antisubmarine-warfare squadron stationed in Maine, three at the Pentagon.
His Maine squadron flew a plane that tracked submarines, handling missions from the Azores to Iceland. "I sat in the back seat of a patrol plane, sort of coordinating our mission," he said. He had a crew of 12, "some officers, some enlisted, all with different gear and different specialties, collaborating and sort of integrating into one mission."
Integrating into Philadelphia: After the Navy, Brown signed on with Citi, where he has been for 12 years - mostly in New York. Before coming here last summer, he spent a couple of years in Dallas, merging branches of the acquired First American Bank into the corporate fold.
"When we got here, my wife and I decided we would jump in with both feet," he said. He is on the board of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, the Kimmel Center, the Committee of Seventy (he and his wife, Lorena, were among the 800 poll monitors dispatched during the April primaries) and Big Brothers Big Sisters Southeastern PA.
"I will tell you - Philadelphia's a tough banking town": To give one humbling example, his office is in a Smith Barney suite - inside the rival PNC Bank Building.
"We don't talk in the elevators," he said.
