DoDEA

Martha Brown is a career educator with extensive experience leading Department of Defense schools around the globe.

Born and raised in South Carolina, Brown attended Limestone College where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in education. She also earned a master’s in Education with an English emphasis from North Georgia College. She earned an Education Specialist degree in School Administration from Converse College in Spartanburg, S.C. in 1988.

Brown began her career in education as a drama teacher at League Junior High School in Greenville, S.C. She went on to teaching assignments in Columbia and Spartanburg, S.C. as well as Jefferson and Gainesville, Ga. before joining DoDEA in 1980 as an English teacher at Ramstein Junior High School in Germany. Her other overseas teaching assignments for DoD schools were at Berchtesgaden Elementary School and Kaiserslautern High School.

Brown moved into school administration in 1987 and held several key leadership positions before being selected as the principal of Kaiserslautern High School in 1993. During her tenure there, she adopted and implemented a restructuring initiative, undertook an extensive cross-curricular technology initiative and implemented a computer-assisted math support program--both in partnership with the National Science Foundation—and introduced other valued initiatives.

In 1997, Brown was selected as the DoDEA Secondary Schools Principal of the Year and transitioned to a position at the DoDEA Europe area office where she had oversight for curricular and curricular-support programs. She also led the implementation of the DoDEA school reform initiative for all DoDEA Europe schools.

In 2000, Brown was selected for a sabbatical and spent a year pursuing advanced graduate studies of leadership for educational change at the University of Utah. She returned to DoDEA Europe as principal of Heidelberg High School where she served until 2002 when she returned to the U.S. to become the principal of Lejeune High School at Camp Lejeune, N.C. During her tenure at LHS, the school implemented an initiative to ease the transition of 9th graders into the high school setting, expanded course offerings in both Advanced Placement and professional technical studies, and initiated steps to optimize the school schedule.

In 2004, Brown was selected as the Fort Campbell community superintendent of DoD schools at Fort Campbell, Ky. In 2008, Brown became superintendent of the DoDEA Okinawa District located in Okinawa, Japan, where she focused on accelerating student achievement through exceptional instructional delivery linked to the individual needs of students; standards-based curriculum; targeted assessment for and of learning; and building collaborative cultures attentive to the academic success of each child.

Brown was named the Senior Civilian Leader for all DoDEA Pacific schools in June 2012. DoDEA Pacific is composed of over 23,500 students, 3,300 full-time employees, and 49 schools geographically organized into four districts within the Pacific theater: Guam, Japan, Okinawa and South Korea. She is responsible for an annual budget of approximately $400 million.

Brown resides in Okinawa with her husband Rex. Her son and daughter-in-law are both DoDEA graduates.