Becky Johnson is an award-winning executive who has devoted her career to harnessing the power of the private sector to make a positive impact on public issues. As Chief of Staff, she oversees the organization’s strategy and change management efforts, and leads the External Relations team consisting of Government Relations, Business Development, and Communications.
She began her career in government, traveling with the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to advance U.S. business interests abroad. This experience taught Johnson that where strong institutions, rule of law, and collaboration between the public and private sectors exist, communities and markets thrive. Since then, she has worked with two industries – food and beverage and personal care – to build diverse coalitions and public-private partnerships to tackle issues like childhood obesity, plastic pollution, sustainability, forced labor, over-regulation, and many others.
As Senior Director for Global Public Policy at Kimberly-Clark, Johnson positioned the company as one that was solutions focused in protecting the nation’s infrastructure and reducing global plastic pollution. She advocated for a commonsense approach to the UN Global Treaty on Plastic Pollution and served as the founding chairman of the board for the Responsible Flushing Alliance dealing with U.S. waste management and sustainability issues. Johnson’s efforts also helped the company fulfill its promise to provide essential products to more than 175 countries and protected over $110M in annual sales that could have been lost due to over-regulation.
Before joining Kimberly-Clark, Johnson served as the Executive Director of the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation (HWCF), a CEO-led childhood obesity reduction effort with a diverse coalition of over 300 organizations. The group established a public-private partnership with First Lady Michelle Obama, shifted the U.S. marketplace by making the business case for companies to invest in healthier products, and reached over 60 million students in the U.S., Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil through its public health efforts. HWCF was hailed at the G-20 as the global example of best practices in public-private partnerships.
Johnson holds a course certificate in Globalization from the University of Oxford Mansfield College in Oxford, England and a Master of Arts degree in International Commerce and Policy from George Mason University. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science, with a minor in Public Relations at Union University.