Meet Anne Brown
What is your name?
Anne Brown
What’s your official job title?
Department Administrator, Department of Biology
Years/Months at NYU:
One year and three months! I started right before we shut down, so I’ve done most of my job remotely since being hired.
What’s your hometown?
Seattle, Washington.
What kind of projects do you work on?
I am mostly faculty and researcher facing: I help hire lab staff, process visa applications with OGS, work on faculty promotion and tenure, assist the Department Chair, and generally work in operations for the department. I’m big on streamlining processes and making unwritten rules written in order to increase equity and access.
What’s your role in the AMC?
AMC Monthly email lead and Secretary-elect of the AMC.
Any advice for new administrators?
This seems like such a small thing, but if you’re new to a job, use the opportunity to start a good email organization system! There are different inbox organization philosophies and strategies you can find online: I learned mine from a student worker who worked in logistics before starting grad school. My brain feels clearer when my inbox is clean, and I think it makes me more effective at my job.
I didn’t start office work until I was in my late twenties and when I started I hadn’t used Excel since high school. It was scary! My advice to anyone– new administrator or not– is that you can learn new technology. Linkedin Learning and NYU iLearn are both great places to go, and there are so many how-tos and instructions in basically any learning modality you prefer, and generally, people are really helpful if you ask for help figuring something out. The big secret that I didn’t realize when I started office work is that everyone who is really good at Excel (or whatever it may be) still uses Google to search for how to do things. Once I discovered this I learned more quickly because I felt less pressure to be perfect.
What does a normal day look like for you?
The Biology Department is large and our PIs have continued hiring research staff throughout the pandemic, so I’m probably working on hiring someone, processing a visa with OGS, or both of those things at any given time. Depending on the season, I’m also gathering materials for faculty review or promotion cases. Apart from those typical tasks, I have long-term projects focused around efficient information storage, information transmission, and preserving institutional memory. Right now, I’m spending time prepping some historical departmental data for analysis, which I really enjoy doing!
Is there a benefit or perk that you use or think everyone should know about?
Something I think everyone should know about is the Critical Skills for Emerging Leaders program. I signed up as soon as I could and loved the courses. They’re designed really well, Claire and Eric are great and responsive facilitators, plus you get to meet other people you wouldn’t typically meet who are in around the same career place you are. This program along with OGI events have been my main touchpoints with the University outside of the AMC: all three spaces are great!
What are you currently reading?
I’m a huge fiction reader. I’m currently reading Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy– love a good 19th-century novel! Before that, I was reading NK Jemisin’s Inheritance series and her Broken Earth series.
What is your go-to app on your phone right now?
Definitely my Discord app. My friends and I have a Discord server for chatting, and I’m also on a server for architecture enthusiasts.
Coffee or tea?
Tea!
Favorite travel destination?
This is a hometown plug! I grew up in Seattle, which is just truly a beautiful city to visit. Seattle has fantastic and fresh food, huge local art and music scenes, and really interesting architecture. It’s also remarkably green, even in the winter. It has great public transport and bike infrastructure. The tap water is delicious and the air always smells like plants or the ocean. There are a ton of local parks: my favorites are Green Lake, Discovery Park, and Gasworks Park.
For a day trip out of Seattle proper, I recommend getting your hiking boots and a windbreaker and walking along Dungeness Spit (just be sure you know the tide schedule!) The beaches in Washington State are rocky and covered in driftwood and you can see all sorts of wildlife. If you pick up a large rock, you find little crabs scurrying around underneath.
LinkedIn profile link:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-brown-624539193/
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