Intentional Performers With Brian Levenson

Professor Maria Brown joins us on this week’s episode of the podcast. Dr. Brown has a PhD from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, and she wrote her dissertation entitled, “Psychiatric history and cognition trajectories in later life: variations by sex, race and ethnicity, and childhood disadvantage.” You will find out from Maria that her upbringing was anything but normal, and she had to deal with mental illness in her family, poverty, and other challenges that made her a unique case coming out of high school and at Ithaca College. Fortunately, Maria was willing to share her story, the challenges she’s faced, and how she’s risen above some of those challenges. In this episode, they discuss what her childhood was like (5:40), what her day to day was like with her mom’s illness (7:00), what her siblings were like (8:25), the values her parents passed down to her (9:50), how religion played a role in her life (13:40), if she was surrounded by poverty (15:20), how her upbring