Britta (Williams) Brown was so new to her new job with the Detroit Pistons in August 2020 that she’d “not even found the bathroom” when the NBA sent out an avalanche of memos and directives on the league’s efforts to reboot its season after its March suspension due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

As the franchise’s newly minted senior director of basketball administration, it would be her job to coordinate the Pistons’ medical and operations staff, coaches, players and outside vendors to create a bubble for the team to convene later in September. The Pistons were not one of the 22 teams the NBA invited to its bubble in Orlando based on standings the day of the spring suspension, but they were allowed to essentially set up and run a mini-training camp in Detroit.

“I laugh now looking back at those first days,” she says. “From the very beginning, we had a Covid leadership team and we met every single day. Safety was our number one priority. Hotel, transportation, logistics – all of that had to be coordinated. We had a great staff and team. I was just the quarterback.

“I was just thrown into it from the very beginning. People are looking to me to make decisions. Looking back, you realize there is beauty in learning to be nimble.” Nimble, indeed, works well in defining the life of the Baltimore native who came to Carolina in the fall of 2004, played four years of lacrosse and earned a degree in economics in 2008.

Nimble to move from an early dream to play college field hockey but pivot into lacrosse when she thrived in a Baltimore club lacrosse team called the Sky Walkers and attracted the attention of Tar Heel coach Jenny Levy.

Nimble to move through coaching, high school admissions, fundraising and donor service positions at five venues before reaching what she calls a “dream job in professional sports.”

Nimble to juggle a marriage with another pro sports professional (husband Will Brown works on the video staff of the Detroit Lions of the NFL) and decide to live in an RV for 18 months in San Francisco because of the adventure element coupled with the exorbitant cost of Bay Area apartment rentals.

And nimble to thrive in a world with few female peers.

“I try not to think about that,” Britta says. “You just want to excel in your role, and you just happen to be female. Still, having a role that’s not typical for a female does have some pressure. You want to do really well so you can continue to blaze a path for those who come behind you.”

Britta grew up in suburban Baltimore and played field hockey, lacrosse and basketball through high school. She landed on the radar of Levy, who also grew up in Baltimore and has an extensive network in Mid-Atlantic lacrosse and athletic circles. She played defender for four years for the Tar Heels.

“We always like to take kids who maybe don’t have as much experience in the game of lacrosse but are great athletes,” Levy says. “We just saw Britta with a lot of potential. We have built a lot of championship teams with players like Britta. We can bring them in, mold them, train them to become great lacrosse players. Her energy and spirit were awesome. She was hard-working and tough. She fit all of the things we look for.”

Britta sponged up all the lessons from a coach who would go on to a 26-year and counting career leading the Tar Heel program and would collect national titles in 2013 and 2016 – teamwork, focus, discipline and overcoming obstacles.

“What I always appreciated was that Jenny would not let you cut any corners,” Britta says. “If you wanted to slack off, she would not let you do that. I appreciated the accountability she brought to the team. I try to take that with me – that people have to hold themselves accountable to a high standard.”

After Carolina, Britta spent three years at the University of Maryland in special event planning and donor engagement and then moved back to Chapel Hill to join The Rams Club’s staff as a regional director of engagement. She met her husband Will while in College Park (he was on the Terrapin football video staff), and when he got a job offer from the San Francisco 49ers, they picked up, moved west in early 2017 and Britta found a position at a prep school coaching lacrosse and working in the admissions office. Then the Lions called Will, and the Browns were receptive to moving back toward the east – closer to her Baltimore roots and his family in South Carolina. Britta worked two years at Eastern Michigan University in athletic development before catching the eye of Pistons management.

“I thought she could really grow and become a star in her role when she got her feet under her, and that’s been the case,” says Pistons General Manager Troy Weaver.

Beyond coordinating the team’s Covid operations protocols, Britta oversees the operational logistics and administration of the basketball operations department. That includes supervising important events like summer league, the NBA Draft and training camp, day-to-day team scheduling and support (practices/game execution, meetings, protocols), budget management, NBA league office reporting and coordination of basketball-related efforts to support business operations.

“I’ve always been kind of an operations and logistics person, that’s kind of just how my brain thinks,” she says.

She’s putting into place many of the skills she learned playing lacrosse. “As an athlete you learn about teamwork, having empathy for others, building a family culture,” she says. “Being a student-athlete helped me with that. There’s the desire to be excellent. At Carolina, we talked about excellence and wanting to win and compete at the highest level. Everything I do, I think back to my days at Carolina.”

Or, as Levy says, “Be flexible, stay flexible and have a good sense of humor. With that, a lot of good things can happen. That certainly fits Britta.”

Britta and Will have applied that philosophy to their home life as well.

Will grew up in Georgetown, S.C., and as a boy wanted to be a truck driver and travel across the country – or at least get an RV when he retired and take to the road. He also worked as a cook at a country club beginning at age 16 and wondered if the food and restaurant business might be his ticket to travel. Then he fell into doing football coaching videos at Benedict College in Columbia and thought that, too, would be a way to travel. Since then, he’s worked in video operations at Middle Tennessee, Connecticut, Maryland, the 49ers and Lions.

“Will took me to an outdoors show when we were in Maryland,” Britta says. “It was first time I’d ever been in one. I saw they could be really nice and have modern amenities, like a small apartment.”

“I decided as a kid I wanted to retire and drive an RV around the county,” Will adds. “Then I said, why wait? You’ve got open road and beautiful sky. And it’s easy to tell where we’re parked – you’re going to smell good food coming from it.”

The Browns bought an RV when they moved to California and, after a while in a $2,500-a-month, 700-square foot apartment near Levi Stadium, they decided to live full-time in the RV. During down-time and vacation they traveled around the state of California, and Britta created a blog called “Browns’ Dope Little Adventures” to chronicle their trips. They have a sign they post at each RV stop: “Welcome to our Happy Place – The Browns.”

The Browns drove their RV to Detroit when Will went to work for the Lions in early 2018. But cold midwestern winters made them rethink having the RV as their permanent residence, so they now live in apartment and use the RV for weekend and vacation excursions.

“I’m a city girl from Baltimore. I never imagined myself going RVing, much less living in one,” she says. “When you step out of your comfort zone is when you find the most fun.”