Victor Brownlees

Director of Finance, City of Baytown, Texas

Victor Brownlees

Victor previously worked as a Chief Executive Officer (City Manager) in the UK for a number of jurisdictions prior to relocating to the US in 2017. When appointed to his first local government Chief Executive role in 2001 he was, for a time, the youngest such post-holder in the UK.

He is an accountant by profession and a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy (CIPFA) - the leading body for practitioners specializing in public sector financial management. In 2016 Victor was elected a Fellow of CIPFA in recognition of his contribution at senior level to fiscal stewardship in the UK public sector.

Victor is an alumnus of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government Program for State and Local Government and a Credentialed Manager with the International City/County Management Association (ICMA).

As a member of the GFOA ‘Rethinking Budgeting’ taskforce since 2020 Victor’s goal is to perfect his culinary skills as a municipal finance chef. However, he has no intention of ‘cooking the books’ – “we are artists, searching for the perfect blend of raw data and human aspiration, marinated in the juices of citizen engagement.”