Dr. Sybril Brown, affectionately known as “Dr. Syb,” is a Vanderbilt-educated, Harvard-trained, two-time Emmy award-winning multimedia journalist, author, international speaker and presenter. 

With extensive experience in traditional and social media fields spanning more than 25 years, Dr. Syb is the author of two books: Innovate: Lessons from the Underground Railroad, which examines the UGRR and the Internet as among America's most effective, innovative and disruptive networks, and The Color-Full Alphabet Book, a Dr. Seuss-like book pairing positive images of children of color with encouraging words.

Dr. Syb is a tenured, full professor of journalism at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee where she was instrumental in helping to establish the New Century Journalism Program in 2003 & currently teaches Social Media Reporting, Digital Citizenship, Mass Media & Society and Entrepreneurial Media. 

A respected journalist, Dr. Syb began her career working behind the scenes at ABC in Milwaukee, CBS in Chicago, and was a former general assignment reporter, fill-in anchor and fill-in talk show host at the CBS affiliate in Nashville. 

Dr. Syb is a sought-after speaker and lecturer joining the roster of high-end conferences such as Tedx Nashville and the internationally-popular Web Summit in Dublin, Ireland, a premier global conference attracting more than 10,000 of the world’s leading thinkers & doers in technology.

In her latest book, “Innovate: Lessons from the Underground Railroad,” Dr. Syb’s research examines today’s Internet parallels with the early 19th century slave escape routes of the Underground Railroad (UGRR) and how the UGRR is among the most effective, disruptive and innovative networks in American history. 

Dr. Syb earned her Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from Vanderbilt University, her M.Ed. in College Student Personnel from Loyola University of Chicago and her B.A. in Broadcast and Electronic Communication from Marquette University.