Maria Browne, ‘first lady’ of NBC6 and mentor to the Women of Tomorrow, dies at 71
Maria Josefa Junquera Browne juggled a lot of firsts in her 71 years.
Browne, who died in Miami Beach on Oct. 2 of complications from stomach cancer, was the first Hispanic to be crowned Miss Florida USA in 1969, said her friend and former WTVJ NBC6 news anchor Jennifer Valoppi. A second runner-up in the subsequent Miss USA pageant. The first Hispanic Homecoming Queen at the University of Florida in 1970, according to the school. One of the first female Hispanic bank executives in Florida when she served as a vice president for the former Southeast Bank in Miami in the early 1980s.
Family, which included her husband, two sons and a granddaughter she doted on, came first, too.
But so did Browne’s mentoring role with the Women of Tomorrow Mentor & Scholarship Program in Miami that she helped found, and her leadership position with The Cushman School, where she had sent her sons.
“She was pretty much accomplished in whatever she did,” said Valoppi who, in 1997, founded Women of Tomorrow with the assistance of then NBC6 president and general manager Don Browne and his wife, Maria.
Women of Tomorrow
Women of Tomorrow was founded and guided by the principle that professional women could share their knowledge to mentor at-risk and disadvantaged young women. In doing so, Valoppi and the Brownes and the mentors that followed like Katherine Fernandez Rundle, Adrienne Arsht and Trina Robinson hoped to inspire the girls to aim higher and to empower them with the means to do so.
“They wanted women of color in the media to mentor those young women and I thought that was cool,” said her son Christopher Browne, an assistant U.S. attorney in Miami.
“Don was super devoted and when I first came to Miami — he brought me down here — and I met Maria, I thought, ‘This woman is really incredible,’ ” Valoppi said. “She was the first lady and ambassador for NBC6 and Telemundo and for the Women of Tomorrow. And here’s Don, this powerful man I knew from New York, and when I met Maria I realized he had married his equal in so many ways.
“Don is such an advocate for women and minorities in the workplace and in Maria you could see her as a woman who set the tone for so much of who he was — between Maria and his mother, for sure,” Valoppi said.
Valoppi recalls that first major — and, yes, nerve-wracking — fundraising gala for Women of Tomorrow, held at the NBC6 studios in 2002, and how it set the tone for all that followed.
“We had just had a big anthrax scare and we were all on high alert and everyone was reeling from 9/11 and here we are, having a gala in spring 2002 and bringing in 500 people to the new studios at NBC6. It was a little bit of a challenge and we were all freaking out, and Maria and I worked closely to manage every detail.
“She was a philanthropic founder of the organization, for sure,” Valoppi said. “She used to put together the coolest, most amazing tables and make sure the room was filled with all these various celebrities and donors that she’d recruit. She went so far out of her way to try and help kids and mentor kids in our public high schools. She was an amazing woman. She was behind the scenes in a lot of ways and did not look for a lot of attention for herself but did so much.”
Born in Cuba, raised in Florida
“Ironically, when she first got to this country they were renting a little apartment across the street from Cushman,” said her son Christopher. “You can imagine Cushman was something my mom was not thinking about [attending] as it was a well-to-do school and my mom taught us how lucky we were to be educated in a place like that.”
Born to Jose Luis “Sobrin” Junquera and Maria Josefa “Josefita” Azorin in Havana on Dec. 31, 1949, Browne and her extended family fled Camagüey, Cuba, in 1960. A couple of years later, she was looking out her window across the street at Cushman, the little oasis that opened in 1924 in northeast Miami. The Junquera family eventually settled in Plant City, Florida.
There, Browne graduated from Plant City High School and was crowned Strawberry Festival Queen in 1967.
At the University of Florida amid her homecoming queen honor — “a big deal in 1970,” her son said — she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1972.
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“To become second runner-up in the Miss USA Pageant as someone who was in this country for less than seven years was pretty amazing,” Christopher Browne said. “It was a different world in those times and with that opportunity came a lot of chances to be the face of the university and philanthropy. For a 19-year-old girl, that was a huge deal.”
Browne started her banking career in Atlanta, where she would meet her husband, Don. She was recruited by Southeast Bank in Miami to become a bank executive, which led to the couple’s move to Miami Beach in 1981.
The move also reacquainted Browne with Cushman and another passion flourished. This time, Browne was in a position to help others.
The Cushman School
At Cushman, Browne went from mom of two students to taking on an active and philanthropic role in helping guide the school. She was a longtime member of Cushman’s board of trustees. The private school has named a scholarship in Browne’s honor to help a diverse population access its educational opportunities, said Arvi Balseiro, Cushman’s head of school..
“Maria was such an influencer, such a positive force, a woman of character who pushed Cushman to the forefront. It was always important to Maria to always make sure we could provide a Cushman education to those who might not be able to afford an education. We wanted to find a way to honor her and her belief system. Passion was the perfect word for Maria. No matter what she did, it was with great passion and that’s what enlisted people’s hearts,” Balseiro said.
Family bonds
“Ryan and I are in both in public service. She taught us the importance of that and giving back,” Christopher said. His younger brother, Ryan, is an Afghanistan investigator with the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs and a former CNN national security reporter.
After Ryan was born in 1985, Browne put her banking career aside to help raise her children.
“She was also very proud of the fact she raised two college football players,” Christopher said. “She came to every single game in the course of six years. My brother played for Harvard. I played for Princeton. And she would fly all over the country to go to our games. It was a big deal for her. She never missed a game or moments that mattered in our lives. I don’t know how she did it, but she did.”
Said cousin Isabel M. de Quesada: ”Maria, or ‘Popy,’ as our family called her, had the unusual combination of amazing strength and graceful demeanor. She was decisive, with a clear sense of purpose — someone who did nothing she believed in halfway.”
In her last years, Browne was “Abie” to her cherished grandaughter, Adelia, her family said in their obituary. “She taught her to sing, make mischief, and dance, usually to Celia Cruz’s “La vida es un carnaval.”
“Maria Browne was a giant, a force of nature and of goodness,” tweeted MSNBC anchor Jose Diaz-Balart. “There are no words to describe how much she taught us, how much she will forever be in our hearts. Gracias María, por todo, siempre.”
Survivors, donations
Browne’s survivors include her husband, Don, sons Christopher and Ryan Browne and granddaughter Adelia.
A funeral Mass was held. The family asks for contributions in Browne’s name to the Women of Tomorrow Mentorship & Scholarship Program, via womenoftomorrow.org.
This story was originally published October 15, 2021 at 3:56 PM.
