Paul R. Brown

Paul Brown is an author, consultant, and speaker living in Southern California. He has degrees in English from Tufts University (BA) and the University of Rochester (MA), and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School.

Paul’s clients have included the states of California and Colorado; the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD); the Santa Clara Valley Water District; the Orange County (CA) Sanitation District; the Orange County Water District; the West Basin Municipal Water District; the Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC); and the cities of Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, San José, and Seattle.

He was a founding chair of the International Water Association (IWA) Cities of the Future program steering committee and was named an IWA Fellow. He is a former member of the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP) board of directors. Previously, he has served on the International Advisory Panel for the Institute of Water Policy of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS, as well on the Stockholm Industry Water Award Committee.

In 2020, he published Too Good to Be True: Scottsdale and Privatization in the 1980s, available in paperback at Amazon.com. He is co-editor (with Vladimir Novotny) of the book Cities of the Future: Towards Integrated Sustainable Water and Landscape Management, published by IWA; co-author (with Vladimir Novotny and Jack Ahern) of the textbook Water Centric Sustainable Communities, published by John Wiley & Sons; and a contributor to Growing Greener Cities: Urban Sustainability in the Twenty-First Century, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. He was a guest lecturer at the 8th Annual Distinguished Lecture Series in Sustainable Development, Cambridge University, United Kingdom; and he delivered the 2007 Thomas R. Camp Lecture at the Boston Society of Civil Engineers.

From 2013 through 2014, Paul was a Visiting Professor and Director of Applied Research at the University of South Florida’s Patel College of Global Sustainability in Tampa, Florida.

Education

Certificate, Negotiation Mastery, Harvard Business School Online, 2021

AICP, Certified Planner, American Institute of Certified Planners, 2006

MBA, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 1982

MA, English, University of Rochester, 1973

BA, English, Tufts University, 1971

Activities

Fellow, International Water Association (IWA)
Board Member, Urban Water Institute (UWI)
Life Member, American Water Works Association
Independent Director, Kennedy Jenks Consultants, Inc. (2015-2022)
Board Member, Council for Watershed Health (2015-2023)
Former Board Member, International Society of Sustainability Professionals
Member, Project Management Institute (PMI)
Past Chair, IWA Cities of the Future Steering Committee
Past Member, International Advisory Panel, Institute for Water Policy, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS
Past Member, Board of Advisors for the four‐part Public Broadcasting System Series, Edens Lost & Found
Past Member, Steering Committee, the National Leadership Summits for a Sustainable America
Past Member, Stockholm Industry Water Award Committee
Past Member, Water Environment Research Foundation’s (WERF) Infrastructure Research Committee focused on Innovation and Research for Water Infrastructure in the 21st Century
Lecturer, 8th Annual Distinguished Lecture Series in Sustainable Development, Cambridge University, United Kingdom
Lecturer, 2007 Thomas R. Camp Lecture, Boston Society of Civil Engineers
Participant, Innovations for an Urban World: A Global Summit, The Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio, Italy, July 2007

Timeline

1975

Paul Brown joined CDM Smith as a technical writer in 1975. At the time, the firm (then Camp Dresser & McKee Inc.) was based in Boston, had 25 offices, and annual revenues of less than $30 million.

1983

After completing his MBA, Brown became CDM Smith’s corporate planner in 1983, responsible for the design, development, and implementation of the firm’s strategic planning process.

1986

From 1986 to 1989, Brown served as the president of CDM Smith’s project development and privatization subsidiary, CDM Development Corporation, which completed one of the earliest and most successful water treatment plant privatization projects in the country.

1992

In 1992, Brown relocated from CDM Smith’s Cambridge headquarters to Carlsbad, California, where in 1996 he was made Division Manager for the Western United States.

2001

Brown was elected to the CDM Smith Board of Directors in 2001.

2003

In 2003, Brown was promoted to president of CDM Smith’s Public Services Group (PSG), responsible for the delivery of consulting, engineering, construction, and operations services to the firm’s municipal, regional, and state government clients throughout North America. By 2008, PSG had total revenues of over $639 million.

2008

In 2008, Brown led the establishment of CDM Smith’s Neysadurai Centre for Integrated Urban Solutions in Singapore and was named the Centre’s founding technical director.

2009

With the election of Dick Fox as CDM Smith’s Chief Executive Officer in 2009, Brown was promoted to Executive Vice President, Global Market Development and joined a four-person executive leadership team.

2013 - 2014

From January 2013 through 2014, Brown was a Visiting Professor at the University of South Florida.

2013 - Present

In 2013, Brown established Paul Redvers Brown Inc. in Carlsbad, California, where he is working today.

What People Are Saying

“Paul is both an innovator and pragmatic project manager. He has been a leader in the development of sustainable water and wastewater projects, as well as a visionary regarding the future of global cities. Paul’s body of work includes many water, wastewater and transportation projects, as well as an incalculable value facilitating complex, multi-party decision-making processes. Paul is simply the best in these situations. Not only is Paul a great planner and project manager, he also brings a business perspective to this sometimes esoteric subject matter that will prove invaluable.”

— Brian G. Thomas, Ph.D.

“As a key member of leadership and the CEO of MWH Global for over three decades, I have the highest admiration for Paul’s effect on CDM Smith as their chief strategist and marketing mind. His competitive force made us a better firm as we constantly had to raise the bar to compete. If anyone has backlog problems or a disjoined strategy, reach out to Paul for your elixir of answers. For MWH’s sake, we are glad he retired, for the industry’s sake it is a huge opportunity to share in his wisdom.”

— Robert Uhler

“Paul is a highly accomplished business leader who has been the guiding strategist behind a global engineering firm known worldwide for innovative and sustainable projects in water and transportation. Paul has influenced thousands of government officials, engineers, planners and others around the world with his thought-leadership. Through books and articles he has inspired a worldwide initiative to improve the sustainability of cities in developed and developing regions. He frames the world in new ways that illuminate what needs to be done and what can be done to make cities sustainable in the 21st century.”