Rob Brown

Finance Director
(607) 272-2292 ext. 165
rwb4@cornell.edu
Administration

Robert Brown has spent their life working and volunteering in the mission-driven sector, with particular passion for human rights, economic equity, and environmental causes. Deeply rooted in the grassroots, they perceive Cooperative Extension’s mission to connect communities with research-driven practical skills as essential to an informed, healthy society.

Their financial management experience spans a range of organizations from co-founding and building up a bootstrap free clinic, to grassroots direct action agencies and nonprofit materials reuse retail operations. They have also provided “SOS consulting” for organizations in financial distress, whether that be broken/noncompliant financial structures or organizational turnarounds. They consider a healthy nonprofit finance department as not only fulfilling conventional functions of applying accounting standards and robust compliance, but fulfilling an educational and service-oriented function in tandem with traditional social service programs of an agency. They’ve manifested this principle historically through activities like designing programs for agency clients’ financial health; supporting aggrieved workers in understanding rights and seeking relief for wage theft; and initiatives that build financial expertise and self-agency for program leaders and front-line staff within their agencies.

In addition to their work as finance director for Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County, they currently volunteer as a board member of the Community Foundation of Tompkins County; a legislative appointee to the Tompkins County government’s Workforce Diversity & Inclusion Committee; and as an executive officer of FINZ: The nonprofit finance professionals’ association of Tompkins County.