Jessica Brown Receives Texas A&M Alumni Award
As a civil engineering student starting college at Texas A&M University, Jessica Brown didn’t anticipate that she’d eventually be considered an outstanding graduate.
But A&M has recognized her accomplishments with the 2024 Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Distinguished Graduate Award. It’s presented to Aggie graduates who’ve significantly impacted the civil and environmental engineering fields, exhibited professional leadership and made lasting contributions to their communities.
She was also appointed to a three-year term with A&M’s College of Engineering Advisory Council, whose members are engineering leaders and innovators who advise and support the college’s leadership, students and faculty.
Despite her many accomplishments, Jessica called the honors surprising: “You think of all the choices you made over the course of your career, and it’s interesting to now look back at how they shaped where you are now … I never would have thought.”
Jessica joined Freese and Nichols in 1998 and is now a vice president, board member and Water/Wastewater Planning Practice Leader. She’s also a nationally recognized expert on asset management, master planning and modeling. She helped found the firm’s water/wastewater master planning services group, which now has a 70-member staff across 12 offices in five states. She also played an essential role on the management teams that helped the firm earn Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Awards in 2010 and 2024.
Jessica’s extensive service as a community leader and volunteer includes two three-year terms on the Aledo ISD school board and eight years on the A&M Civil and Environmental Engineering Advisory Council, where she is now an emeritus member.
At the Distinguished Alumni banquet, accompanied by her family, she expressed gratitude for the people who’ve impacted her career. She said that along the way, she has learned to continuously take chances, grow, learn from her failures, and invest in the community and people. It’s a legacy she looks to pass on to the next generation.
“I hope that at the end of my career, I have invested in people as much as others have invested in me,” she said.