Profiles of Tenacity: Carter Brown

Carter Brown is a public relations major from Lancaster, New York, expected to graduate in Fall 2025. Brown is a student assistant for the UGA Sports Communications department, pursuing his love of sports.

Read his Q/A below.

Why did you choose your major?

I always wanted to work in sports, but I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do until I was going into my senior year of high school. I did an informational interview with someone from the Buffalo Bills PR department. I found that sports communications and media relations are careers I am really interested in, and PR was the easiest path to that job.

What does tenacity mean to you?

To me, tenacity means that even when some things don’t go your way, the ability to put your head down and continue pushing towards your goals is what will make you great. Even when you reach that short-term goal you set for yourself, you have to remember what your long-term goals are and continue to work towards them. I try to remind myself not to get too comfortable with small victories but to continue to look towards what I still hope to achieve in my professional career.

What is one piece of advice that you would give to other Grady students?

I would tell other Grady students to put your own spin on what you learn in class. A lot of Grady classes cover topics broadly, but the best thing you can do is focus on them from the lens through which you want to interpret these topics. I try to always think about how something would look or sound through the voice of a sports organization’s communications department because that is where I hope to work after graduation. It helps to tell your professor what interests you because they will work with you to try and incorporate your area of interest into class discussions.

What motivates you?

My fellow classmates around me. Even though we don’t all have the same goals and interests, we are all in a similar situation — trying to acquire summer internships and professional experience so that we can do what we love for the rest of our lives. Seeing everyone succeed and work hard towards their individual goals makes me want to work that much harder to do what I love after I graduate.

What or who has had the biggest impact on your life during your time at UGA?

Everyone that I work with in the Sports Communications department. It has been so amazing to work with people that not only love sports like I do, but people who hold the same interests as me. They’ve allowed me to find my niche at UGA aside from my classes, and the experience working in the office has allowed me to grow as a professional and as a person.

What has been your biggest accomplishment in the past year?

My communications internship this past summer with the Philadelphia Union. It was my first time living entirely on my own, and it was really tough for me. I didn’t have any friends or family within a six-hour radius of me so I was there to figure out how to make the most of my experience while trying to figure out how to live entirely on my own. Being able to take away as much as I did from that experience while living on my own was a really big accomplishment for me.

Where’s your favorite place on campus and why?

The North Campus lawn that looks out onto East Broad Street. It was where I stopped on my campus tour during my senior year of high school, and at that moment I knew I didn’t want to go to school anywhere else. When I walk through that area every now and then I think back to that moment and try to take a second to think about how fortunate I am to have the opportunity to go to this school.

What advice would you give to your freshman self?

I would tell them to continue prioritizing being great. I had a teacher in grade school who told me that I would always have the opportunity in life to either be good or to be great, and that’s something I try to remind myself as much as possible today. College life is a major adjustment at first, especially as an out-of-state student. I think I got lost in that a little bit my first two years, and I took shortcuts that were easy instead of working a little bit harder to be great. It has always been a phrase that I try to live by when it comes to schoolwork or work experience, so if I could go back and tell myself not to lose sight of that, it would be some worthy advice.

Editor: Madden Callahan, emc50486@uga.edu