January 12, 2011

Mary Dailey Brown is founding president and CEO of SowHope, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping poor and oppressed women around the world by promoting wellness, education, and economic opportunities. She received her bachelor’s degree in photography and psychology from Southern Illinois University and her master’s degree in nonprofit management and leadership from Grand Valley State University. Brown worked for a year as a presidential photographer in the Jimmy Carter White House before running a successful photography business for ten years. In 1988, she began volunteering to lead teams annually to northern Mexico to build homes for impoverished families, a service she has repeated every summer since. In 1993, Brown became the founding executive director of Love INC, which collaborated with local social agencies and churches to serve the working poor. In 1998, Brown became the director of missions at Bella Vista Church. It was during her missions to the Middle East and the Third World that she became keenly aware of the plight of women in these countries. In January 2006, she formed SowHope. Brown was a 2009-10 Peter Cook Leadership Fellow at the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies.
To learn more, read “Rockford Woman Founder of Female-Oriented Charity.”