Marcia Johnson

I've been in the education field for 34 years, starting back in the 90s when there was a shortage in my original field. I have a degree in psychology, so I pivoted into the education sector, and that's how I started my journey. I also did some social services for about 5 years when I took a break, but my heart always leads me back to serving children and families, definitely in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods. That's where I always seem to end up. Today, my main area of expertise is training and developing staff - I'm really good at training and developing the next generation of educators. I manage staff, oversee running a center building, and do a lot of customer communication with families and state representatives when they come into the building for compliance. I'm pretty much a jack of all trades - sometimes I'm in the classroom coaching, modeling, substituting, covering, so I'm very diversified in what I do daily. One of my most notable achievements was a $2 million expansion I did a few years back at Head Start. I was very proud of that because we were able to service another 60 to 100 more children in the community that needed servicing. It took almost a year to get done, but it was very successful.