Community Service

Clinton J. Brown
Regional Area Manager-Facilities
General Motors Worldwide Facilities Group

By Garland L. Thompson

Clinton J. Brown, regional facility engineering manager for GM's Ohio and Pittsburgh manufacturing plants, has in-depth knowledge of plant operations, current and future. His GM managers say he has "demonstrated ability to lead large organizations," and his track certainly suggests that to be true.

He's led multimillion-dollar manufacturing operations with hundreds of employees, and his long career with the giant automaker has moved him from city to city as he rose. He began as a Hampton University industrial engineering co-op student at the Cadillac Motor Division in Detroit, in 1970, and, upon graduation two years later, he moved to Flint, Mich., as a plant layout engineer. In 1975, he transferred to what became the Delphi division in Dayton, Ohio, and rose through a succession of supervisory and managerial jobs. His master's degree in engineering management from the University of Dayton surely helped there.

Brown also is a graduate of the Dayton Leadership, founded by the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce, in 1976, as one of the oldest community leadership training organizations in the U.S. He has remained active with the organization as an honorary chair of its alumni group and was chairman of Dayton's Urban League board of directors, in the early 1990s. He served on the National Urban League's board of trustees, from 1994 to 1997, and remains active in League projects.

He also was appointed by county commissioners to the Montgomery County (Ohio) Human Service Levy Council, in 1992, handling oversight for the allocation of $85 million in funding for community agencies and programs.
One of his key activities today is his membership on the steering committee of Parity 2000, Inc., a community development think-tank that promotes entrepreneurship and economic development in inner-city Dayton.

Brown also is a board member of the West Dayton Development Trust Fund, established as part of a comprehensive settlement of a battle over a landfill. The Trust Fund provides grants to fund economic development or community development projects in impacted inner-city neighborhoods.

His managerial expertise is thus put to work to serve development needs far beyond the corporate arena in which he works, and his wide corporate contacts help him marshal contributions and in-kind support for the projects he joins.

Garland L. Thompson is assistant managing editor of The Philadelphia Tribune and a member of the Black Engineer of the Year Awards Selection Panel. He can be reached at GThompson@ccgmag.com.