Kathy Johnson
In 2019 Kathy was honored to receive the “Unsung Hero” award from the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE), recognizing her many years of work advancing educational equity and systemic change.
Kathy is a Co-Founder and Partner of CQ Strategies, LLC, a collective of 5 consultants working together on implicit bias, cultural competency and organizational change. CQ Strategies has provided trainings and consulting services to more than 200 organizations, businesses, and schools since 2010. CQ’s “We All Belong” program, developed in conjunction with the City of Burlington, Vermont’s Community and Economic Development Office, uses a community-based learning model for creating individual, organizational, and systems change.
Kathy is Principal of Vermont Equity Training and Consulting, which focuses on gender equity, diversity, and creating positive school climates and environments free of discrimination and stereotyping. Kathy is a Senior Training Consultant for the A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE ® Institute of the Anti-Defamation League. In this role she works with educators, administrators, community members, and middle and high school students on anti-bias education. Kathy has taught graduate courses on gender equity through Saint Michael’s College in Winooski, Vermont.
From 1996 to 2005, Kathy was Director of Equity Initiatives at the Vermont Institutes, where she, Peter Perkins, and Nicole Saginor embedded Dialogue Education into the Teacher Associates program and all Equity work at the Institute. These three collaborators contributed a chapter describing their work in Dr. Vella’s book “Dialogue Education at Work: A Case Book” (2003).
Kathy is an elected Justice of the Peace and has served on state, regional, and national boards and task forces. She is a Board member with the Vermont Association of Middle Level Education. She served on the Diversity & Inclusion National Task Force of the American Association of University Women, and the Boards of the Vermont Teacher Diversity Scholarship Program, the Vermont Advisory Council on Bullying, Hazing, and Harassment Prevention, and Northern New England Tradeswomen (now Vermont Works for Women). She served as an elected Select Board member for the town of Worcester, VT.
Kathy has a Masters of Science in Mediation and Applied Conflict Studies from the Woodbury Institute at Champlain College. She lives in Central Vermont where she enjoys hiking, x-country skiing, yoga, being with friends and family, and spending time in the natural world.
