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there for “about a week,” until her father, TheodoreNace, a Presbyterian minister, was re-assigned to achurch in northern California. After trouble in Californiaover his stand in favor of civil rights, the family wastransferred to a church in rural North Dakota.“He was outspoken,” Johnson says. “And thatmeant that I was always trying to find and hold thecenter, trying to keep everybody in the room talking,and not push them to the edges.”For college, Johnson chose Oberlin in Ohio, thesame school her father attended, a college foundedby Presbyterian ministers. Oberlin has a long and distinguishedcivil rights tradition, being the first collegein the United States to regularly admit African Americanstudents (beginning in 1835) and women (since1837). “Oberlin certainly fit with my father’s values,”she says. “It was an extraordinary place to be. It’salso a Conservatory—my mother was a musician, thechurch choir director—so it seemed right in that respectas well.”Johnson’s interest in organizations and businessbegan during a summer job at a human rights organizationin New York. “My father had given me a NewYorker magazine piece about Amnesty Internationalwhen I was at Oberlin. He said, ‘Why not work for Amnestyin New York in the summer?’” So she got a jobthere one summer during college. “I sat in this organization,the hayseed from North Dakota, and I learneda lot. I began to recognize the power of organization.”After graduating in economics and history fromOberlin in 1974, she taught at Tunghai University inTaiwan. Oberlin had a long association with the universityand regularly sent new graduates there. WhenJohnson returned to the United States, she appliedto the department of organizational management atYale. “I wanted to find out how you make organizationswork well. So business school was a way to getat organizations.” She received her MBA from Yalein 1979.While Johnson, 58, was at Yale, J. Irwin Miller, theCEO of Cummins Engine, based in Columbus, Ind.,came to speak to graduate students in business.Miller was a leader in promoting corporate social responsibility,and ran the company during the 1960s,when the Cummins Engine Foundation became activein race and poverty issues. During that time, he wasnamed the first lay president of the National Councilof Churches.Inspired, Johnson landed a job at Cummins, andworked there as a manager from 1979 to 1985, a timewhen the company was committed to the total qualitymovement. Total Quality Management (TQM) holdsthat continuous improvement in a business or organizationis possible when everyone at every level iscommitted to meeting customers’ needs and perceptionsof quality. TQM places a high priority on teamworkand strategic planning to meet ever-expandinggoals, lessons Johnson carried with her into otherbusinesses and to GSA. “Cummins was a huge learningexperience,” she says.In the mid-1980s, the family moved to Boston, whereJohnson became the chief financial officer of EllenzweigMoore, an architectural firm. In 1987 and 1988,Johnson worked as a recruiter for a staffing firm, andthen as a consultant to a diversity recruiting firm. Theflexibility of the work was helpful, because this periodof her career was predominantly “about having kids,”she says. Her son, Lucas, is in college at Stanford,and her daughter, Anna, is a Yale graduate.A 1992 call from the Clinton-Gore transition team“The virtual workplace has a major impacton the culture. It is better financially,environmentally, security-wise, andfor wellness.” —Martha Johnson, Administrator, GSAS P R I N G 2 0 11 | COLL ABOR ATIVEGOV.ORG/LE AD | Leadership 15