Father Brown is interim president of Jesuit

Jesuit High School’s board of directors has begun a national search for the school’s 31st president. The board has created a presidential search committee to identify and assess candidates.
    

The committee is composed of religious and lay men and women and includes board members, alumni of various generations, parents of alumni, past faculty and administrators, the president of Jesuit High School in Tampa, Florida,  and a representative of the Central and Southern Jesuit Province.
    

The committee is seeking a broad range of qualified candidates, both members of the Society of Jesus and lay candidates. The board has given its full support to Father Brown during the interim period, and Father Brown has expressed his interest in the permanent position. 
    

Father Brown’s most recent assignment was as the superior of the Jesuits living at Jesuit High School, which includes those assigned to Immaculate Conception Church on Baronne Street. In this role, Father Brown worked with the High School Leadership Group, which includes presidents, principals, board chairmen and superiors of the U.S. Central and Southern Province. He also serves on the board of directors at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Houston.
    

Father Brown also has worked in Jesuit’s Office of Institutional Advancement as a major gifts officer, a position he has held since 2017. His work soliciting support for the “Minds & Hearts Enlightened” capital campaign, which has successfully secured $30 million for Jesuit’s development, offered Father Brown the opportunity to build key relationships with alumni, parents and friends of Jesuit.
    

“Nothing makes me happier than to serve at Jesuit High School,” Father Brown said in January about his appointment. “I believe we have something very special here. Faculty and staff, coaches, benefactors, volunteers and parents, are all on fire to educate these young men. Our students come to us from outstanding families, and together we bring these men up in the faith so that they will serve the Lord our God and the common good, really knowing themselves as men for others. I’m humbled to take on this new role and confident that Jesuit’s future is as bright as ever.”
    

Father Brown first joined the team at Jesuit in the fall of 2012, teaching theology, Spanish and eventually initiating the art program, the first in Jesuit’s history. In campus ministry, he directed the Metanoia retreat program and expanded the Sodality. Father Brown also served on Jesuit’s Ignatian Identity Team, enhancing the faculty in-service program and the mission-driven curriculum review.
    

The 2016-17 school year saw an interlude in his service at the school to participate in the Jesuit Tertianship program in Dublin, Ireland. During that time, he also spent three months serving in a Jesuit Refugee Services school in Iraq as an Ignatian pedagogy consultant. 
    

Originally from near Eunice, Louisiana, Father Brown worked as a project manager for web development firms in Houston and Denver before discerning a call to join the Jesuit order in 2000. He has taught at St. John’s College in Belize and Jesuit High School in Tampa and has been assigned to parishes of the Society of Jesus in El Paso, Texas, and Tabasco, Mexico.
    

Father Brown holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and letters from Saint Louis University. At Boston College, he earned a master of divinity degree and a second master’s degree in theology focusing on Ignatian spirituality. He was ordained to the priesthood in 2011.