JJohnson Communication
About
Since 2005, JJohnson Communication has worked closely with colleges and universities, advancement organizations, community nonprofits and healthcare organizations to build relationships with their stakeholders through strategic communications and marketing. We know that the most effective and credible communications are aligned with organizational strategy – whether a leadership initiative, a fundraising campaign or general positioning in the market.
Because of our deep experience and growth, we are now aligned with The Napa Group, a strategy, leadership and organizational design firm – for which Janis Johnson is Senior Partner. This arrangement provides our clients with additional expertise and services from a leading firm, originally anchored in the business sector and now specializing in higher education, university related and community foundations, alumni associations and institutional advancement broadly.
Janis Johnson formed JJohnson Communication after more than a decade as a senior communications executive in higher education and health care and 25 years as an award-winning journalist with major news media. Her diversified career as a strategist and practitioner who has built and managed communications teams and initiatives in complex organizations brings a broad portfolio of strategic communications, marketing, fundraising and other constituent communications.
By purposefully aligning strategies and strategic communications and marketing, organizations of all sizes can build market position and stakeholder buy-in and engagement.
Previously Janis spent 12 years in senior communications positions at Georgetown University, Georgetown University Medical Center and Loyola Marymount University. As assistant vice president, she oversaw the award-winning communications for Georgetown University’s $1 billion comprehensive fundraising campaign, then the largest and most successful in the university’s history. In that capacity, she developed and led an integrated campaign marketing program of brand development, publicity, print materials, films and electronic and Internet media. Before that, in the mid-1990s she was director of communications for Georgetown University Medical Center during a volatile period of downsizing and mergers, responsible for external and internal communications and the development of materials for health practitioners and consumers.
As assistant vice president at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles from 2001 to 2005, Janis built the institution’s first comprehensive communications office and led a multi-year award-winning branding initiative that repositioned the institution as “LMU in LA.” That refreshed identity raised the visibility of the university in the West and strengthened its positioning for a $300 million fundraising campaign.
For the first 20 years of her career, Janis was a staff writer for The Washington Post and later a correspondent for USA Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Miami Herald, Miami-South Florida Magazine, the Boston Globe and other publications focusing on news, politics, business, health, science, religion, travel and other lifestyle topics. She won several magazine awards for her work, including a special Fund for Investigative Journalism grant.
Janis has served on the board of directors of To Celebrate Life Breast Cancer Foundation in Marin County, California, and has been the “woman traveler” behind the popular travel blog, Womantraveler, since 2005. She is a graduate of Duke University.
Her semi-memoir, The Artist’s Eye: Vernon P. Johnson’s Watercolors of 1950s Small Town America, chronicles small town America in the 1950s through the visually detailed paintings of her father — and the stories behind them.
The Artist’s Eye: Vernon P. Johnson’s Watercolors of 1950s Small Town America, by Janis Johnson, features a man and an era. Her father, Vernon Johnson, was an accomplished watercolor artist whose paintings translated the story of one community into the larger and more far-reaching story of the 1950s across America. It’s been especially popular among Baby Boomers and “mid-century” arts and culture followers.
Featured service: Contact the author Janis Johnson to discuss options for translating the legacy of your family, business or nonprofit into a book, website or blog.
Would you like to start a project with us?
The fastest way to get our attention is to email us -- janis@jjohnsoncommunication.com. We'll respond quickly for a conversation and next steps. Let's start working together today!