Who is Gloria?
A servant leader and multi-sector changemaker, Gloria Johnson-Cusack, MPA, provides practical consulting services to leadership teams and boards of businesses and institutions committed to optimal performance and innovation.
She is a master strategist, facilitator, speaker and coach focused on change leadership that encompasses profitability, governance, authentic community engagement with diverse communities and strategic planning for fundraising, advocacy and partnership development.
She co-authored a book entitled “Growing the Elephant: Increasing earned advantage for all” which was listed in December 2022 in Bloomberg Business Week: “The 52 New Books That Top Business Leaders Are Recommending—and Why. In February 2023, the book was announced in London, United Kingdom as a finalist among hundreds of book submissions in the Business Book Awards “Smart Thinking” category. The book helps individuals find more productive ways to have difficult conversations about inequality.
Gloria lectures frequently at the graduate School of Professional Studies, Columbia University in New York and serves as Board Chair of the Firelight Foundation supporting communities in Africa and as Board member of Patients for Affordable Drugs NOW, an ongoing national bipartisan 501(c)(4) advocacy organization that helped usher the historic 2022 Inflation Reduction Act signed by President Biden which reduces for millions of patients the cost for insulin and penalizes drug companies that raise prices above the rate of inflation.
As a person of African-American and Indigenous Haliwa-Saponi ancestry, Gloria came from a segregated background in the United States and moved from being middle-class to working-poor to decidedly privileged. From and through this journey, Gloria aims to use her lived-experiences and unique storytelling to build bridges.
She has been an executive in business, philanthropy, government, academia, and nonprofit sectors. Previously Senior Advisor to the President of Florida International University which serves more Hispanic students than any university in the United States, Gloria has served as a lobbyist for the charitable sector, Executive Director of Leadership 18 (an alliance of 18+ CEO’s responsible for leading national nonprofit organizations in the U.S), Board Chair of National United Cerebral Palsy, Director of the Office of Congressional Relations at the U.S. Peace Corps, Senior VP for a cause-marketing advertising firm, and Special Assistant to the President in the White House Office of National Service. Gloria holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from American University and Columbia University.Gloria on LinkedIn.