IN THIS ISSUE:
Acts of Altruism | Alumni Interview | Class Profiles

Alumni Interview (continued) — November/December 2004


Playing ...

Sheila Johnson shows her school spirit as a UI cheerleader during the late '60s.

In connection with a $7 million gift to New York University's Parsons School of Design, where she sits on the board, Johnson has gotten Parsons students involved with her business, challenging them to design uniforms for the spa, with the winners getting real-world design experience as well as a head start in the business before even graduating. "We'll have their product in the spa and be able to sell it under their name," Johnson said. "It helps me out; it helps them out. It's the springboard for their career."

Johnson has also continued to drive toward an old goal: providing arts education as a basis for learning everyday values. While still in the classroom, Johnson had worked in an arts-education school for severely disabled children, where she saw firsthand how kids who otherwise might not be able to grasp a subject were able to do so through the arts.

In addition, arts education teaches focus, discipline and determination in ways no other subject can, Johnson said, and through those values enables students to better themselves in every other field. "I really believe that the arts provides a foundation in your life," she said. "The arts helps you see in a deeper perspective what life is all about."

To that end, Johnson spent five years in the late '70s as a U.S. Information Agency cultural liaison to the Middle East, where she worked to establish Jordan's first conservatory of music. For her efforts, she received Jordan's highest educational honor.

Among other donations, Johnson has given $3 million to the Hill School in Middleburg, where her son attended, to build a performing arts center and $1 million to the State University of New York at Morrisville to establish the Sheila Crump Johnson Institute to support diversity.

"I give lots of money away every year to arts organizations because my mission and focus is children and arts education," Johnson said. "I just don't throw money away. I make sure the programs I do support really try to reach not just a certain segment of the community but a broad segment of the community, [so] that can help others experience what I've grown up with."

The arts haven't been her only focus, nor her financial gifts her only contribution. Recently, in addition to running her own charitable foundation, Johnson became spokeswoman for the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The organization has launched a global network to help train law enforcement to find and rescue children involved in child pornography and to establish strict legislation to ensure child pornographers are held accountable.

"It's really working," Johnson said of her and the organization's efforts in partnership with Microsoft. "I just got back from Cape-town, South Africa, where an arrest was made, and one of the largest-traffic pornographers was sentenced to 30 years."

For Johnson, results like that are reason enough to keep going.

"Life is too short, and you're in there to get a job done," she said. "You're going to do it and be the best at it. That's all it is."

Photo courtesy of Sheila C. Johnson