Dr. J. Elise Brown serves as Manager of IT and Program Operations at Marble Collegiate Church.

Elise believes that every congregation has a mission and every community needs a powerful faith witness in it. Her passions and skills include helping congregations and organizations create effective ministry plans and then implementing those plans to produce abundance and fruitfulness.

Having worked in diverse communities throughout her 20 years in ministry, Elise understands the factors needed to move congregations toward greater, more authentic diversity and mission impact.

She was born and raised in Iowa and did her undergraduate work at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She continued her education at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, earning a Master of Divinity degree, and at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, earning a Master of Theology in Ethics. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology in 2014 from The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and is a faculty member at Lehman College in the Bronx, NY.

She is an ordained clergy person of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and is rostered in the Metropolitan New York Synod.