Charlotte Brownlee
Charlotte Brownlee is a Consultant with our Search & Consulting Group.
Previous Experience
Charlotte joined CS&A after 19 years at Cate School in Carpinteria, CA, where she served in a variety of leadership positions, including both the Assistant Head of School for External Affairs and Director of Admissions and Enrollment.
Charlotte helped steer Cate’s evolution from a regional school into one of the most selective boarding schools in the country. She doubled applications, expanded recruitment, designed cohesive admission criteria and strengthened the evaluation process. In collaboration with the Board of Trustees, she refocused the financial assistance program to ensure equity of experience for all students. She also led Cate’s comprehensive advancement efforts, raising more than $110M despite pandemic-era fundraising challenges, and adding significant endowment for financial assistance, faculty salaries and signature facilities, and successfully completing the largest campaign in school history.
Broadly engaged across the education industry, Charlotte served on the Advisory Board for the National Partnership for Educational Access (NPEA) for ten years, on the Gateway to Prep School Board for two terms, and as a faculty member for the Enrollment Management Association’s Admission Training Institute (ATI) for five years.
Prior to Cate, Charlotte began her career in education at the Anderson School at UCLA, where she served as both the Executive Director for Alumni and Annual Giving, as well as the Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations. Her foundation for strategic leadership was laid at Deloitte Consulting, where she consulted with Fortune 500 companies, focusing on change management and strategic planning. Her clients included Hewlett Packard, Kaiser Permanente, and several consumer products organizations.
Education & Interests
Charlotte holds a B.A. from Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges and an M.B.A. from the Anderson School at UCLA. She is an alumna of the first class of girls at Cate School and is the proud parent of three Cate alumni. She and her husband split their time between Santa Barbara, California and Castine, Maine, where she enjoys yoga, hiking, cooking and singing.