Get to Know Us!
A monthly showcase of the amazing staff who make the International Center a place where the UF community meets all its international goals!
Sharon Brown
Sharon Brown is our International Agreements Coordinator in the Office for Global Research and Exchange, here at UFIC. Sharon’s role is managing international agreements between the University and international institutions around the world. “There are over 300 that are all in certain stages—coming up for renewal, under negotiations, or new agreements in the initial process of development,” says Sharon.
Sharon has lived in Florida for a long time, “But to hardcore Floridians, I guess I’m a Jersey girl.” She was born in New Jersey, but soon her family of seven moved to South Florida. After graduating from Southridge Senior High in Miami, Sharon got her new, more prestigious title than Jersey girl: “I’m a Gator!” She graduated from UF with a BA in Political Science.
After undergrad, Sharon left Gainesville with her husband, Greg, and moved to the Space Coast. “I ended up working for a Brevard County Commissioner—the kind of de facto mayor of Merritt Island.” She had a few titles and positions there that really honed her office and organizational skills. But after eight years, as Sharon describes it, “the Gainesville vortex sucked us back in!” Sharon got her next job, working at the UF Foundation as a Prospect Researcher.
Sharon worked at the Foundation for 14 years, where she learned all the intricacies of the UF fundraising machine. She found that she had a knack for it: “It was a thrill discovering people who might want to give back to the University.” She worked researching public records of UF alumni and setting them up with the fundraising partners, who would follow up on leads and walk prospects through the benefits of supporting their alma mater. Sharon loves puzzles, and she worked on some very lucrative puzzles in her fundraising days. “Once I found this old-timey baseball card on the internet of a Gator who played on the team here in the 60’s.” A fundraiser reached out to the gentleman, using the card as a conversation starter, and the alum was charmed and agreed to start working with UF. “Over the course of a couple of years’ work, he ended up setting up a half-million-dollar scholarship fund for baseball!”
After working at the Foundation, Sharon found her way at the International Center as an Executive Assistant, though her job rarely focused on a typical assistant’s work. She oversaw the coordination of events for the Study Abroad department, including their biannual Study Abroad Fair and the International Student Achievement Awards. She also used her past knowledge of fundraising to help get UFIC involved in UF’s annual Giving Day. “When I got here, I asked around—like, do we participate? Can we start?”
Sharon used her experience with donor databases and innovated an annual initiative, “I started playing around with spreadsheets and found a lot of our alumni who had studied abroad had the same address. I put two and two together and realized they were couples, some who had participated in the same Study Abroad program in college!” As Giving Day is close to Valentine’s Day, Sharon had the idea for “Study Abroad Sweethearts”, a way to engage with alumni, but also highlight their stories. Sharon uncovers whether partners met on their programs or how those accounts strengthened their connections. “There are over 450 couples throughout the years, and each year, they get more excited to share their experiences!” Sharon hopes that she can inspire the Sweethearts and others through their stories to give back to help future generations of Gators enjoy the Study Abroad experience.
After 4 years, Sharon received a promotion to her current role as International Agreements Coordinator. Here she manages the hundreds of agreements by “battling the email mountain!” Each agreement must be reviewed, edited (if necessary), and renewed, and as the cycle is every three years, there’s always some next step that Sharon needs to administer. Between our many studies abroad agreements, research agreements, and more general memoranda of understanding (MOUs), Sharon is always busy utilizing her organizational skills to keep the gears moving.
In her spare time, Sharon is an avid reader and “the only person left on Earth who has a blog!” she lightheartedly mentions. Her blog is called bookthrasher (www.bookthrasher.com), named for the little birds she loves to watch in her yard, and for how inherently cool the word thrasher is. Sharon burns through and reviews dozens of books every year. “My tagline is, ‘I’m a long-form girl, in a TikTok world.” Sharon developed a love of books from her father, who had a 10,000-book-strong collection, which she’s now transformed into an Etsy bookshop. She lives happily here in Gainesville with her husband, whom she met as a newbie-Gator. “We’ve been together since comparative politics!” where she reads vociferously, shares her love of reading with the internet, and uses that same passion for everything she does here at UFIC.
Story by: Terrence Funke
Photos by: Christina Cozart