Laurence F. Johnson

Laurence F. Johnson, Ph.D. is Chief Executive Officer of the New Media Consortium (NMC), an international consortium of more than 250 world-class universities, colleges, museums, research centers, and technology companies dedicated to using new technologies to inspire, energize, stimulate, and support learning and creative expression. He is an acknowledged expert on the effective application of new media in many contexts, and has worked extensively to build common ground among museums and universities across North America and in more than a dozen other countries. He is the author a number of important books on the topic, and dozens of monographs, chapters, and articles exploring emerging trends and issues related to that work.

In his current post, Dr. Johnson routinely brings visionaries and thought leaders from across the globe together to define and explore new ways of thinking about and using technology, and to examine emerging trends and issues. The NMC’s annual Horizon Report has become one of the leading tools used by senior executives in universities and museums to set priorities for technology planning. NMC summits and large-scale projects have helped set the agenda for topics such as visual literacy, learning objects, educational gaming, the future of scholarship, and the new web. Recent examples are the NMC’s high-profile experimental campus in the virtual world of Second Life and its leadership role in the MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning.

Having served as president and senior executive at institutions in both the higher education and not-for-profit realms, Dr. Johnson has more than 25 years of experience leading high-profile, high-stakes projects. His educational background includes an MBA in Finance and a Ph.D. in Education that focused on research and evaluation. Among many other recognitions, Dr. Johnson has been honored as a Distinguished Graduate by the University of Texas at Austin.