Nicholas T. Brown

He’s the president of the Spee Club. He’s one of a handful of Harvard students to get an offer from J.P. Morgan. He’s New York born and bred, and many in his class consider him to be one of the most well-dressed, popular, and talked about people at school. But if you ask Nicholas T. Brown ’08 what he thinks of all this, he considers himself to be somewhat of an “enigma.”

“I was with Natasha Alford,” Brown says, “who is just an incredible person and superstar at Harvard, and she said, ‘I’m really anxious to see what they might write about you. Even though I call you a friend, I don’t really know anything about you.’”

“I think, on one hand,” he says, “being a part of a club, there are all these different preconceived notions. You know, what else does he have going on?”

As his younger sister Jesse Brown recalls, “When he was eight or nine, he used to say he knew everyone on the Upper East Side.” Coming from this prestigious background, immersed in everything uptown and Manhattan, one of the hardest tasks for Brown was to come to school and actually make something of himself.

As a rising sophomore, Brown spent his summer working on the set of “The Departed,” and was such a hit with the cast and crew that they invited him to an Academy Awards after-party. He spends time as a mentor in the arts for the Young Lions program at the New York Public Library, in the Crimson Key Society, and works to improve advising in the Government department. Though he’s accepted an offer at J.P. Morgan, he insists he “knows the trajectory of a traditional investment banker,” and is convinced it will not make use of the skills he sees growing in his future. Instead, he hopes one day to pursue a career in film.

The people who know Brown best credit him for making a conscious effort to live a well-balanced social life. “I’ve never met anybody who’s as capable of bringing people together,” his roommate Adam J. Katz ’07 says.

Katz recalls a time when Brown had the opportunity to go to the Oscars, “but instead he chose to stay here and host a party for a bunch of friends from all different walks of Harvard life.”

Perhaps Brown did miss his chance to nuzzle up with Scorsese and DiCaprio, but from what Katz can recall, Brown’s little dorm-room get together sure was one hell of a party. Leave it to Brown to try and top the Oscars.