Roger Johnson

Roger Johnson (June 24, 1934 – February 21, 2005) was an American businessman and government official.

Early life and education Roger Wayne Johnson was born March 29, 1934, in Hartford, Connecticut. the son of an AFL-CIO leader. Although he was initially influenced by his father's Democratic Party politics, young Roger decided to join the Republican Party, according to him, the first time he had to pay taxes. Johnson was valedictorian at Clarkson College of Technology, where he graduated in 1956 with a degree in business.

In 1998, Johnson and his wife Janice pledged $500,000 to endow the Roger W. and Janice M. Johnson Chair in Civic Governance and the Social Ecology of Public Management. The Johnsons saw the chair position as a way to improve public management and civic participation. "I see the chair as a way to elevate professional management to a level similar to other recognized national policy issues such as health care, education and welfare," Roger Johnson said. "Only then will professional management have sufficient political clout to be taken seriously in government organizations." In 2003, Martha Feldman, an organizational and public management scholar from University of Michigan, was named the second Johnson Chair.

Johnson died of lung cancer at his home in Laguna Beach, California, on February 25, 2005.