
Senior Advisor & Chief Strategist
Dr. Ronald Johnson serves as a WIA Senior Advisor and Chief Strategist on a range of issues at the intersection of private industry, higher education, governments and communities. He enjoys a key role in developing content and outreach for WIA’s Connect X and other events and is a recognized policy SME on the confluence of local governments, private sector and community partnerships that creative investment sustainability. In his career, he developed and moderated more than fifty convenings in these areas, adding greatly to shaping a paradigm of collaboration, catalyzed in numerous papers and reports. In academia, Dr. Johnson served as an Adjunct of Practice at a renowned Howard University Institute for Urban Affairs and Research.
As a telecommunications entrepreneur and founder, Johnson for twenty-five years directed successful engineering services, infrastructure and logistics companies that fulfilled CAPEX and OPEX requirements in urban and rural areas. He has served as external advisor on mergers, capital formation and sustainability strategies for small and emerging companies while facilitating millions of dollars in prime and subawards in compliance with government regulations and best business practices.
In urban public service, he is fulfilling his sixth four-year term as Commissioner-Secretary of Fairfax County (VA) Economic Development Authority that is chartered for attracting and maintaining businesses and private sector investments. Equally important, his rural roots began as a generational tobacco farmer in Virginia, where he rose to serve five Virginia governors and was the first African American selected as vice-chairman of the powerful Virginia State Board of Agriculture and Consumer Services, the Southern Technology Council and the Virginia Highway Transportation Advisory Board.
Dr. Johnson has served two U.S. Presidential transition teams on matters related to wireless, anchor institutions and infrastructure policies and sustainability strategies for grant recipients.
A Danforth Fellow, Dr. Johnson holds earned degrees in political science, and business education from the University of Cincinnati and Xavier University (Ohio), and numerous academic, business, and community service honors and awards.
A Vietnam era veteran army officer, Black Enterprise Magazine cited him in “Top 25 Blacks in Telecommunications”.