Aja Brown

Aja Lena Brown ( Clinkscale; born April 17, 1982) is an American politician who was the mayor of Compton, California from 2013 to 2021. She won the election by defeating both incumbent mayor Eric J. Perrodin and former mayor Omar Bradley. Early life Brown was born Aja Lena Clinkscale in Altadena, California, to a single mother, Brenda Jackson, who worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech. Her parents divorced when she was young. She has a fraternal twin brother, Jonathan Clinkscale, who played football at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Brown's mother grew up in East Compton. In 2000, Brown graduated from John Muir High School in Pasadena, Ca In 2004, Brown graduated from University of Southern California, where she received a full academic scholarship, with a bachelor's degree in policy, planning & development that included public policy, urban planning and development. In 2005, she earned a Master of Urban Planning, which included urban planning with a concentration in economic development. The subject of her master's thesis was an analysis of the 2004 failed development of a Walmart supercenter in Inglewood.