Kathleen Brown Begins Job as Executive for B of A

Eight months after her unsuccessful gubernatorial bid, former state Treasurer Kathleen Brown started a new job Monday as a senior vice president at Bank of America, responsible for private banking and investment management.

Brown, 49, will be based in Downtown Los Angeles, developing investment programs for governmental agencies, institutions and individual investors.

She will also oversee a team serving women clients with specialized banking and investment needs, including entrepreneurs and those with new major investment and money management responsibilities.

“It’s a natural fit,” Brown said about joining the California-based bank. “This is an extension of what I did as state treasurer and extension of what I have done for the last decade or so of my life.”

Brown said she weighed a number of job offers, all of them in the private sector, but chose this one because it offered the broadest responsibilities and the clout of a banking giant.

“We are very pleased that a person of Kathleen’s capabilities is joining Bank of America,” said Alexander Anderson, Brown’s boss and the head of the bank’s investment management group. “We think she has the leadership skills and business background that will help us achieve the ambitious objectives we have in mind.”

Before her loss to Gov. Pete Wilson last year, Brown--a Democrat--had served as state treasurer for four years, managing a $16-million annual budget and overseeing a $26-billion investment portfolio. In the mid-1980s she worked as an attorney in the New York and Los Angeles offices of O’Melveny & Myers, where she specialized in public and corporate finance. But most of her career has been in public service, including terms as a member of the Los Angeles Board of Education and the Board of Public Works.