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Q&A With Alex Johnson

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Alex Johnson
Executive Director , Children's Defense Fund-California (CDF-CA)
Location: Los Angeles, CA United States
Joined: May 20th, 2015

About (request update)

Alex Johnson is the Executive Director for the Children's Defense Fund-California. The Children’s Defense Fund-California is the state office for the Children’s Defense Fund; a national organization founded in 1973 by Marian Wright Edelman. In his capacity as Executive Director, Alex leads an organization with 16 full-time staff members and an annual budget of over $2.6 million. Further, Alex leads the organizations statewide advocacy, policy, program and organizing efforts to ensure access to quality affordable health coverage and care for children and low income families, reforming the juvenile justice system, promoting educational equity, and ending child poverty.

Prior to assuming this position, Alex served as Assistant Senior Deputy for Education and Public Safety to Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. Born, raised and educated in Los Angeles, he is the product of Los Angeles public schools and the son of a retired LAUSD teacher and a retired truck driver. Alex’s work has focused on altering the social dynamic that begins with a student's poor education in childhood, progresses to a high dropout rate during high school and ends with a young person's future irrevocably altered by crime, conviction and incarceration.

Prior to his work in Los Angeles County, Alex worked with school instructional leaders in the New York City Department of Education. He provided counsel to school leaders and departmental executives as well as managed complex civil litigation, policy matters and special disciplinary proceedings as part of a teacher quality initiative. He taught constitutional law and civics to high school students as a Fellow with the Marshall Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project. Additionally, Alex served as an adjunct lecturer at Lehman College, one of 23-colleges in the City University of New York (CUNY) system.

As an Equal Justice Works Fellow, he advocated on behalf of indigent defendants at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. Alex began his public service experience as an intern in the offices of U.S. Representatives Julian Dixon and Juanita Millender-McDonald. He served as an aide to Georgia State Representative Douglas C. Dean and as a project manager for the 2000 Democratic National Convention Committee in Los Angeles. Alex worked for the late noted attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. and previously served as an Assistant District Attorney in Bronx, New York where he advocated for victims of domestic violence.

Alex is a graduate of Morehouse College and earned his Juris Doctor from American University, Washington College of Law. Alex is a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Education and serves on the Board of the Wiley Center for Speech and Language Development.

Alex is the author of Beyond Higher Education: The Need for African-Americans to be "Knowledge Producers."

Education (request update)

Morehouse College class of 2002

Undergrad Major: Political Science

Claim To Fame:

Recipient of the SEIU Local 721 "Champion for Children Award" Recognized by the National Action Network with the 2014 African-American Vanguard Award