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Renee Brown
PRESIDENT AND CEO, C.W. BROWN INC.
he weekend of Renee and Charles W. “Charlie” Brown’s daughters’ respective high school and college gradu- ations in 2011, the couple had a huge party including their family, friends, and staff. “Charlie spent that night with everybody who was important to him. It was an
amazing night,” Renee recalls.
The following night, Charlie died of a sudden heart
attack sometime in his sleep. “It’s so cliché, but your life can change in an instant,” Renee says now.
equal partnership, Charlie had been the face—and the name— of the company, sitting on dozens of boards and building rela- tionships that led to huge contracts with Club Fit, Westchester Medical Center, and Westchester Community College. And now that her soulmate was gone, both the state of the company and their three daughters were solely Renee’s responsibility. Renee took the summer off to spend time with her daugh- ters, who were grieving the loss of, as Renee describes, their “happy, fun-loving, prankster, awesome dad.”
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Renee knew that her husband would have wanted a memo- rial service at the Armonk headquarters of C.W. Brown, the general contracting and construction management business they'd built from the ground up. “I knew he didn’t want to do a church service, because Charlie wasn’t religious,” Renee says. “We chose to have a great ceremony in our office. The building it was in now was our dream. I knew that was the right thing to do—it was everything Charlie.”
Renee and Charles W. “Charlie” Brown founded C.W. Brown in 1984. While their business and marriage was an
While the staff was also in mourning, she says, her office team of 25 employees kept the business running smoothly. “We set the business up in a way that we surrounded ourselves with good people,” Brown says. “Nobody missed a step. I was fortunate to have that time.”
When her youngest daughter started college, Renee went back to work. “It felt comforting to be back,” Renee says. “That’s where I’ve been every day for twenty-eight years. I don’t think I’d know what to do if I wasn’t there.”
Renee and Charlie had what C.W. Brown Director of