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Ashley Brown: Indianapolis’ first African-American female chief meteorologist

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When Ashley Brown was growing up, she would tell her mother she wanted to be the first Black something. She wasn’t exactly sure what, but something. Now, at 37 years old, Brown is just that: She became Indianapolis’ first African-American female chief meteorologist when she joined WISH-TV in November 2018.

Brown said she didn’t think about it at first, and it wasn’t until people told her later that she realized the milestone she accomplished. Like many African-American “firsts,” Brown registered her feat after seeing there weren’t any African-American females in her position to look up to.

“[I’m] proud,” she said. “I hope that there’s some little girls out there watching TV and see someone who looks like them.”

That’s probably something Brown will have to get used to now: Minority girls looking for high achievers who made it through the obstacles, especially if they’re interested in broadcast news or meteorology, will almost have to come across Brown. Last month, Turning Point Schools invited Brown for a surprise award because eighth-grade students who visited WISH-TV in January wanted to acknowledge her as a trailblazer.

“[I hope] she sees that it’s possible because it’s what I do for living,” Brown said of girls who may be looking up to her now. “It’s a great feeling.”

Brown’s love for the weather began when she was a child. She took Polaroid pictures of the clouds and would name the different types of cloud formations to her mother, Glynnus Carey. Carey remembered Brown getting exciting about the weather, and she’d have to tell her daughter, “Ashley, I have no idea what a cumulous cloud is.” (For the record, cumulous clouds are those puffy clouds that look rounded at the top.)

Carey described her daughter as quiet and goal-oriented as a child. Brown went to get her first job at the McDonald’s on 21st Street and Shadeland Avenue when she was 14 years old, “and you would have thought she was running a corporate office,” Carey said. Now, all these years later, Carey said Brown becoming the first African-American female chief meteorologist in Indianapolis has “excited me to my soul.”

“Sometimes it doesn’t hit me until they do something nice,” she said of the acknowledgements Brown gets. “Then I realize, oh my God, she’s the first. She’s the first. I get excited. … I just saw something in her, a push. Part of me isn’t surprised because Ashley was always a go-getter. Nothing stopped her.”

Brown, who graduated from North Central High School and studied meteorology at Ball State University, has seen her career take her across the country. She got her first full-time weather job at KSEQ in Palm Springs, California, where she worked for about seven years. Her most recent job before WISH-TV was at WLWT in Cincinnati. In Indianapolis, Brown has worked as a DJ at Radio One and in the weather departments at WXIN and WRTV.

Despite not having an African-American female chief meteorologist to look up to when she was trying to make it in TV, Brown said she found mentors in Steve Jefferson, a reporter at WTHR, and Brian Wilkes, longtime chief meteorologist at FOX59.

Brown’s first TV internship was with Wilkes, who she said taught her more about meteorology and how to apply that knowledge to a broadcast. Wilkes remembered helping Brown make her first weather tapes and said then he knew she “had it.”

“That’s the biggest part about being in this business,” Wilkes said. “In this job you have to earn it, and she worked really hard as an intern.”

Brown, now home in Indianapolis with an official “first” next to her name, has earned it. But with success comes popularity, and Brown has felt the weight of being a weather authority. She said she gets calls every day from family and friends asking what the weather will be like. One of the most culprits: her mother.

“Yes, I’m guilty,” Carey confirmed.

 

Contact staff writer Tyler Fenwick at 317-762-7853. Follow him on Twitter @Ty_Fenwick.

Ashley Brown of WISH-TV is Indianapolis’ first African-American female chief meteorologist. (Photo provided)

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