Tamara Brown was proud, yet humble to show off her Champions of Change award from the White House when she visited relatives in Vicksburg for Christmas.

“It’s wonderful,” Brown said. “It’s a wonderful chance to recognize folks from around the country to move America forward.”

Brown, 40, a chemical and biomedical engineer in Buffalo and a 1989 Vicksburg High School graduate, was honored Dec. 9 at the White House with 11 other local leaders from across the nation for their work to encourage girls and women to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math.

For Brown, the work means making complex numbers and formulas fun for middle school girls who take courses in the AAUW Tech Savvy program at the University of Buffalo, where Brown earned her master’s in chemical engineering and pursues an MBA.

“There’s not a 12th-grader in the country that looks forward to polymer chemistry,” said Brown, who majored in chemical engineering and biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt University. “So, we showed them by making gumdrops, since they are polymers. It’s a very different approach to it.”

Brown didn’t get to meet President Barack Obama that afternoon. “(Senior adviser) Valerie Jarrett came and spoke, and I talked with her,” Brown said.

Brown’s mother, Ophelia Brown of Vicksburg, remembers the phone call when her daughter was nominated for the award.

“She said, ‘Guess where I’m going? I’m going to Washington!’ She just believes in giving back, you know,” she said.

The Champions of Change program was created in 2009 as part of the president’s Winning the Future initiative. Winners ranging from educators to entrepreneurs are named weekly as a different issue is highlighted. Nominations are taken online at www.whitehouse.gov.

Brown joins two others with Mississippi ties named champions, White House spokeswoman Joanna Rosholm said. They are Ivye L. Allen, president and CEO of Jackson-based Foundation for the Mid South; and Lan Diep, an Equal Justice Works/AmeriCorps Legal Fellow who worked with a regional oil disaster legal advocacy team in Mississippi. Both won in June.