Born six years after the U.S. Civil Rights Act hastened desegregation, Brown became a debate champion and class president at her mostly white high school. In her college applications she declared her intention to be the first Black female Supreme Court Justice. After earning undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard and then working for nearly three decades as a lawyer and a judge, in 2022 she made good on that goal. Her new memoir is called Lovely One.
A version of this article appeared in the November–December 2024 issue of Harvard Business Review.