This Wednesday, I’ll be sitting down for an informal conversation with Kristina M. Johnson, one of the nation’s most accomplished educators and innovators – and a former Buff!
Johnson is chancellor of the largest university system in the nation and a former Obama appointee in the U.S. Department of Energy. She and I will spend an hour chatting about her career, before a reception with free food and drinks. Doors at the CASE Auditorium open at 4:30 p.m., with the event beginning at 5 p.m.
Johnson is a higher education leader, distinguished engineer and champion of women in engineering, an accomplished entrepreneur and former CU Boulder engineering professor. As the current chancellor of the State University of New York, she oversees a system that serves more than 1.3 million students each year. When she served on the faculty of CU Boulder from 1985-98, she cofounded and directed an NSF Engineering Research Center.
As Under Secretary of Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy, Johnson was responsible for a broad $10.5 billion energy and environment portfolio. She went on to be a co-founder and CEO of a clean energy infrastructure company. Her other entrepreneurial achievements include co-founding ColorLink, Inc., which was sold to RealD, and is responsible for 3D effects in movies such as Avatar, Gravity and hundreds of other films.
Johnson holds 118 U.S. and international patents and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Inventors. In 2008, she received the Fritz Medal, which is widely considered the highest award in engineering, as previous recipients include Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Orville Wright.
A model and champion for women in engineering, Johnson was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame and, as dean of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, increased the percentage of women faculty from 6 to 19 percent. She has received the Society of Women Engineers Lifetime Achievement Award, the Woman of Vision Award for Leadership by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, and "40 years of Title IX - 40 Women Who Have Made an Impact" by ESPNW.
Johnson received her BS with distinction, MS and PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University. She is married to Veronica Meinhard, the senior executive director of principal gifts and senior associate athletic director at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP).