Jeni Brown, '00 & '03
Many things about being named a 2018 Woman of Distinction by the Girl Scouts of Colorado’s West Slope will stick with Jeni Brown.
One memory will always make her smile. When she told her family about the honor, her eleven-year-old daughter said, “Good job, mom. That’s pretty cool.” Brown thanked the selection committee “… for the priceless gift of making this mom, in the eyes of her pre-teen daughter, ‘pretty cool’.”
The nomination form secretly completed by Brown’s coworkers at JG Management Systems (JGMS) and company founder and CEO Jerome Gonzales was not short on praise.
One of three women honored on November 8, Brown is chief financial officer at JGMS, a management services firm that helps clients manage large-scale ventures such as engineering or infrastructure projects. She is also secretary on the company’s board of directors, chairman for the employee stock option plan and directs daily business operations.
“I grew up in a poor community in Rock Springs, Wyoming,” Brown said. “I had a kind of drive. I knew I had to get my college education to succeed.”
She earned a BS in business in 2000. “Dr. Vail (Richard Vail, PhD) encouraged me to keep going. He and his wife were both very encouraging, straight forward and motivating.”
She took Vail’s advice and completed her MBA in 2003. She began her financial career in the hotel industry which took her to Illinois, Connecticut, Florida and Louisiana. In 2008, she returned to Grand Junction. She remembers she brought her infant daughter to her JGMS interview. Brown and her husband, Glen, are now parents to two girls and a boy.
“I tell my girls it’s important to have people and organizations that support you, but it’s really up to you. Be the hero of your own story,” Brown said.
Although Brown was not a Girl Scout herself, she thinks her own story aligns “…with core values of the Girl Scouts in encouraging and building tomorrow’s role models through courage and confidence.”