Whitney Johnson

Whitney Johnson is one of the world’s most influential management thinkers and was included on the 2015 Thinkers50 list. Management innovators Stephen Covey and Clayton Christensen made the first Thinkers50 lists in 2001, 2003, and 2005. Johnson co-founded Rose Park Advisors with Christensen and served as president from 2007 to 2012. She was involved in fund formation, capital raising, and the development of the $8 million seed round for Korea’s Coupang (which is currently valued at $5+ billion.

Johnson was joined on the 2015 Thinkers50 list by other Brigham Young University alumni Clayton Christensen, Dave Ulrich, Liz Wiseman, and Hal Gregersen. Johnson graduated from BYU magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in music. She applied Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation to her own life and then to the lives of other individuals. She switched from music to a career on Wall Street, first as a secretary then as an Institutional Investor-ranked equity research analyst for eight years. Starmine rated her as a superior stock-picker.

She was named one of Fortune’s 55 Most Influential Women on Twitter in 2014; she has more than 50,000 followers. She co-founded the Forty Women Over Forty to Watch and is a Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards fellow. She is a prolific speaker on innovation initiatives.

She frequently contributes to the Harvard Business Review and is a Linkedinfluencer. She is the author of Disrupt YourselfTM: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work, and Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things Happen when you Dare to Dream.

Johnson is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was born in Madrid, Spain, and served a full-time mission to Uruguay. She and her husband live in Massachusetts.