Family, Equity, Joy
Brian Johnson serves as the chief executive officer of Equality Illinois, the statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization. His passion for fighting for equity was catalyzed by having served as a first-grade teacher and a Teach For America corps member in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Since that transformative experience, Johnson has served in a variety of leadership roles in public education justice. He has worked as the vice president of regional impact for Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE), the executive director of the Larchmont Schools in Los Angeles and the executive director of Teach For America-Los Angeles. Johnson earned his J.D. from Stanford Law School and his MBA, as an Arjay Miller Scholar, from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He lives with his husband, Toby, and their daughter, Josephine, in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago.