Mitzi Johnson | Associate

Mitzi Johnson’s passion is strengthening democratic institutions through better leadership. She consults in leadership development, supporting and training elected officials, public and private sector teams, executives, and academics. She directs the Beacons of Democracy project at the State Legislative Leadership Foundation and teaches public budgeting and management to MPPA students. Mitzi extensively applied and experimented with leadership frameworks (with plenty of trial and error!) while serving 18 years in the Vermont House of Representatives from 2003-2021. As the Vermont Speaker of the House and Chair of the House Appropriations Committee, she was known for working across boundaries to build consensus. In the early days of the pandemic, she led the House in developing one of the first remote legislating formats in the country, earning a unanimous vote across party lines on necessary changes to long-standing rules and practices to serve Vermont in a time of crisis.

Mitzi holds a Master’s in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Vermont, as well as coaching training from the Kansas Leadership Center and Coaches Rising. She chairs the Vermont Foodbank Board of Directors and is a founding board member of the Adaptive Leadership Network, a nonprofit engaged in leadership training and complex problem-solving. Mitzi lives in Vermont on an island in Lake Champlain where, if her to-do list were shorter, she would do more woodworking, knitting, kayaking, and cross-country skiing.