After completing medical training, a fellowship in clinical pharmacology, and the Hugh J. Morgan chief residency, Brown joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1992. In 2000, she co-founded Vanderbilt's MSCI (Master of Science in Clinical Investigation) program with
Thomas A. Hazinski and by 2006 a partner program was created at Japan's
Tokai University. In 2006, Brown was appointed as associate dean for Clinical and Translational Scientist Development, and developed infrastructure for physician-scientist development. In 2009, Brown was named chief of Clinical Pharmacology at Vanderbilt. In 2010, Brown was appointed the Hugh J. Morgan Professor and the first female Chair of Vanderbilt's Department of Medicine. She also served on various academic boards including the National Institutes of Health, the American Society of Hypertension, the American Heart Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Association of American Medical Colleges, and was an associate editor for the journal
Hypertension. the
Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine), the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal College of Physicians and a Master of the American College of Physicians. Awards and honors Brown has received during her career include the Young Scholar Award from the
American Society of Hypertension, the American Federation for Medical Research Outstanding Investigator Award, the
American Heart Association's Harriet Dustan Award, and the August M. Watanabe Prize in Translation Research from the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. In 2020, Brown left Vanderbilt to become the 17th dean of the
Yale University School of Medicine. She is the first woman to serve in this role. ==Personal life==