Eric Anthony Johnson

Eric Anthony Johnson

Degree: 2003, Ph.D.

Job Title: President and CEO, Aeon (affordable housing nonprofit)

Eric Anthony Johnson’s (Ph.D. ’03) doctoral research focused on the impact of policies and economic development investment in Atlanta, Detroit, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C.

Dr. Johnson is an accomplished urban redevelopment leader, consistently delivering results over his career by leveraging a solid academic, real estate development, community engagement and policy background. By applying strong business acumen, innovation and leadership talents, Dr. Johnson is as much at home building organizations and divisions through his enthusiastic energy, collaborative approach, and trust management as he is in making key contributions to real estate development and community and economic development strategy.

Dr. Johnson has developed a specialized niche over his career by taking on organizational and community initiatives in need of turnaround and realignment. Through his firsthand experiences in creating high performance organizations, he has gained a strong understanding of how to jumpstart, build, and turnaround struggling operations and is able to direct professionals and the processes to achieve notable results.

In his current role as president and CEO of Aeon, Dr. Johnson plans to further local partnerships to continue the organization’s work, which involves both the preservation and development of affordable units.

In 2019-2020, Dr. Johnson was chosen to serve as a Michael Rubiner Community Fellow through the Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC) for his innovative work in affordable housing strategy.

In his previous role as the Community Development Director for the City of Bloomington, Minnesota, Dr. Johnson was responsible for the divisions of real estate assessing, building and inspections, environmental health & housing inspections, special projects, planning and development review, housing and redevelopment authority and the port authority.

 In less than a nine-month period while serving as Community Development Director, Dr. Johnson created and provided the leadership necessary in drafting and adopting two ordinances to support affordable housing creation and preservation while further development projects. The first, a 90-day tenant protection ordinance designed to provided tenants more time to relocate in the event of a purchase by a private investor seeking to raise rents. And, the second, the creation of the city's opportunity housing ordinance adopted in February 2019 and by the September 2019 generated over 2.000 market rate developments with over 45% of the units affordable with over $1 billion in development value in the pipeline.

In addition, Dr. Johnson created the city's affordable housing trust fund by the end of 2019 by leveraging $500,000 in partnership with the banking community to launch the fund at $15 million in time to provide the first allocation to preserve over 300 units of affordable housing that would have been lost if purchased by a private investor. Along with creating the strategy to redevelop the city's aging commercial corridor's, Dr. Johnson launched the city's suburban retrofit strategy and was successful in winning the Congress of New Urbanism Legacy Project award to realign the redevelopment projects around new urbanism and place making. This along with providing oversight for the attraction of new hotels, technology companies and supporting the development of the $300 million dollars water park adjacent to the Mall of America, Dr. Johnson provided the much needed energy to accelerate the city's ongoing transformation while not adding any additional financial burden to tax payers and the city's general fund budget.

Prior to Bloomington, Dr. Johnson has worked on transformative urban development projects and issues in the Northeast, Midwest, South and Southeastern regions of the United States. He has served in key positions in economic development, housing and urban improvement, community development policy and management and real estate management and affordable housing. Over his career, he has lead strategic planning and visioning initiatives in support of long-term redevelopment ventures, managed program budgets in the millions, created successful micro-enterprise program and loan fund, reviewed hundreds of community competitive grant applications for funding, secured resources for key initiatives, acquired land for key development projects including an emphasis on affordable housing, built confidence and capacity of staff and community organizations to achieve success and more importantly, taken on tough challenges that many would have not chosen to do so for fear of failure. Dr. Johnson launched his career as a Presidential Management Fellow with the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Johnson received his Ph.D. in Urban Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Delaware, a Master's Degree in Public Administration from Minnesota State University Mankato and a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science and a minor in Criminal Justice from Washburn University.

Dr. Johnson is an Alumnus of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design Advanced Management Development Program in Real Estate (AMDP); Harvard Business School Real Estate Management, Design & Finance Program; Harvard JFK School of Government Public Trust Executive Leadership Training and is an Alumnus of the University of Virginia's Senior Executive Institute at the Weldon Copper  School of Public Service.

Dr. Johnson holds a Certification as a Certified Economic Development Finance Professional from the National Development Council, received a Certificate in Community Based Economic Development from the University of Delaware and is certified as a Business, Retention and Expansion Consultant and Senior Grant Writer and Reviewer from the National Grants Writer's Association. Of further interest, Dr. Johnson is a graduate of the Brooking Institute Emerging Leaders Program, is a Fellow, Institute of Politics, Loyola University of New Orleans, Fellow, Government Leadership Institute, University of New Orleans, and a Fellow, Metropolitan Area Leadership Forum New Orleans.

As an expert in urban development strategy, Dr. Johnson is well versed in the overall context of economic and community development policy in America. He has testified before the United States Congress Ways and Means Committee on community development initiatives and has conducted workshops and participated as a panelist in numerous venues related to economic and community development issues and frequently serves as a reviewer for funding for the US Treasury CDFI awards.

At the University level Dr. Johnson has taught courses in community development, economic development finance, tourism and economic development, systems and process of public policy, urban politics, public budgeting, American government, urban community in historical cross-cultural perspective and the social and economic consequences of capitalism.

Dr. Johnson is an active contributor to several professional affiliations. He is a member of Urban Land Institute; CEO's for Cities; NAIOP (Commercial Real Estate Development Association); and Congress for New Urbanism, Leadership Society, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Phi Sigma Alpha Leadership Society and hold memberships in numerous civic and community organizations. In recent times, Dr. Johnson has also been the author of several Editorial Op-ed pieces for local newspapers; served as Lecturer at various universities and colleges; and as Panel Member, Moderator, and Presenter for a multitude of industry forums, meetings, and conferences.