Sophia Brown serves as the Program Coordinator at PEN America Florida, where she supports PEN America’s work on free expression and academic freedom in Florida. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in English and Rhetoric in Writing from the New College of Florida, where she also spent four years as a student journalist and two years as Editor in Chief of the Catalyst, the college’s student-run newspaper. She has also previously served as a news reporter for WSLR, Sarasota’s local radio station, and had her writing featured on CNN.
Thanks to this background in journalism and coming from what many have called “ground zero” of Florida’s academic freedom movement, she is deeply involved in how higher education policy in Florida has the potential to set a nationwide standard, and how working with students and educators at a local level can be the first step towards systemic change.