Phillip Brown could have played football for a number of colleges after graduating from Germantown Academy, but he had fallen in love with theater and instead decided to attend the University of the Arts. Since then he has built a successful career as a professional actor, writer, director, and producer, making an impact—nationally and internationally.

At the age of 19, he started his first non-profit theatre company, the Urban Artists, a group of young actors who performed street plays. “It was pretty radical stuff,” says Brown, who discovered his love of writing around this time. Beat Down the Negative was his first play to be performed. It toured the Philadelphia School District, spreading the message that “If you can dream it, you can do it.”

A firm believer that “Art should reflect society and point out its imperfections and flaws—it should lift society up,” Brown felt torn when he moved to Los Angeles to pursue more commercial interests in screenwriting and acting. After a trip to Thailand, Brown’s Urban Artists became the Salt World Theater Company, which reached out to communities in need by working with local churches and spreading positive messages through theater.

Since then, Brown has enjoyed great commercial success, working for Viacom and most recently for the Disney Channel, as a screen writer and acting coach for the hit shows That’s So Raven and Cory in the House. He has also managed to balance his commercial pursuits with outreach work, which has taken him to many cities across the U.S. and such countries as Costa Rica, Malaysia, Mexico, and Southeast Asia, where he has brought theater to youth who might not otherwise be exposed to it.

Brown recently moved back to the Philadelphia area to be with family and joins Shipley as an Upper School theater teacher. In addition to teaching, he works with the Academy of Cinema and TV, which brings Hollywood to communities across the U.S. that wouldn’t normally have access to commercial theater. He is also in the process of launching a new acting studio in the Philadelphia area with his business partner Richard Lyons in Los Angeles.