A Peek Inside Her Agenda: Alencia Johnson
Cultural Strategist, Social Impact Leader, Entrepreneur, and now Author are some of the titles that Alencia Johnson holds. But beneath all these titles, Alencia is a true disruptor at her core. Starting her career in social impact communications, Alencia has flawlessly transitioned from communications to corporate and political engagement to founder and Chief Impact Officer of 1063 Broad Street. As Chief Impact Officer, Alencia marries her social justice, narrative-building, and cultural transformation skills to deliver mission-driven solutions for brands, people, and organizations.
Alencia is as unique as her career, having served as a senior advisor for Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign and President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, where she helped shape cultural moments and media strategies. To further cement herself as a thought leader in politics, Alencia led national public engagement for Senator Elizabeth Warren’s 2020
presidential campaign. Before making a name for herself in politics, she was an influential leader at Planned Parenthood, where she worked at the intersection of politics, media, and entertainment to shift the narrative on gender equity.
On March 11, Alencia brings her poignant expertise, personal and professional experiences, and insightful advice with her book Flip the Tables: The Everyday Disruptor Guide to Finding Courage and Making Change, where she gives details of how she has been able to become a disruptor in her career and personal life and gives readers the prompts that have helped her find her way.
Her Agenda spoke with Alencia about her expansive career and how we can all become disruptors for the greater good.
Her Agenda: Okay, so you’ve worked in a lot of different sectors such as social justice, social impact, corporate engagement, communications, The White House, and now entrepreneurship. Can you tell me more about your journey and how you got to where you are today?
Alencia Johnson: Fast forward to after college, I went to work at Geico. It actually helped me understand corporate culture helped me understand communications at a different pace. I got a first glimpse of how corporations engage with civil rights groups and the government, which actually has helped me through my entire career. Then, I got the opportunity of a lifetime to work on President Obama’s reelection campaign. I talk about that in the book and how I spoke that into existence. Life and death is in the power of the tongue. I moved to Chicago, and my job was on the surrogate communications team. My job was to book all of the Black surrogates from your Valerie Jarrett’s and Congressional Black Caucus numbers to Kerry Washington, Hill Harper, and your favorite rappers in media. I realized then that sometimes it’s not the messenger; it’s the message. I thought Barack Obama was an amazing messenger, but some people need to hear from other people, some other messengers.
After that, I got the opportunity to work at Planned Parenthood. Then, after that, Senator Warren’s and President Biden’s campaigns. I started working on my own, doing a lot of work with different fashion labels, music labels, and the entertainment industry on how to show up in these moments and use their influence right where they are for good. I recently had the opportunity to work for Vice President Harris’s election campaign in 2024 while writing this book and doing all these other projects. The thread throughout my career is helping people understand people and institutions understand their sphere of influence to do the most good.
Her Agenda:Going back to what you said about purpose, I know that’s also a big theme in your book. One of the things you said is that purpose isn’t a job or title; it is living at our highest self in search of something bigger. What advice would you give to women who are still trying to find their purpose, or they’re still trying to find their way, or how they can use their voice to create change in their community?
Alencia Johnson: I don’t know if I say it directly in the book, but I think that you can tell in the theme, a lot of what helps us reveal our purpose is being still and getting back to ourselves. Particularly for Black women, when we take time for ourselves, society has made us feel as though that is selfish, that we are not allowed to do that. And to be honest, that’s because of the institution in which our ancestors were brought here, right? We were not brought here to have leisure and be creative. We were brought here to birth laborers for this country. This is a systemic challenge. On the flip side, it is imperative for us to be still and take care of ourselves. I put in the preface a quote from Alice Walker about having a healthy soul in the face of oppression. And yes, that’s a key piece of our strategy to fight oppression, but the step in between that [is] focusing on ourselves and having this healthy soul and building our courage and being able to get to a place where we don’t care what other people are thinking about what we’re doing.
When you get to that place of understanding or having that courage and that confidence, as well as being still to be able to hear where, whether you’re a person of faith, where God is telling you, whether you’re not a person of faith, but you have these confirmations that you’re on the right path or that there’s something that you should do. That is when you’re able to step out on faith and do it and not be scared to take a completely 180 pivot. Do not be scared to do things that most people might say don’t make sense. You’ll never be able to do it. Then you do do it, right? A friend told me that my book inspired her to quit her job as an amazing, well-known doctor to start her own practice. I fully believe the other thing about figuring out your purpose, the urgency around it, is that all of us have unique gifts and talents. And if we are all in our purpose, that’s collectively moving our communities forward.
I’ve slowed down in life, but also I’m operating with a sense of urgency when it comes to my purpose because the world around me needs that. If you can’t think of a way to get out of your own way, as Black women do, when we think about the people around us, they need us to be in our purpose more so than anything else.
Her Agenda: I’ve never heard it said like that. What you just said about Black women and us being in our purpose and how that helps our communities. I love the way you put that together. It goes back to that word, disruptor, and you use that a lot in your book. I would love to know what being a disruptor means to you. One of the things that I like is that in your book, you said that it comes in many different forms, whether good or bad. So, what does being a disruptor mean to you?
Alencia Johnson: Mm, it’s shaking things up, right? A disruption, to your point, it is good or bad. It brings us all to our knees. I talk about how this concept came to me, thinking about my favorite story of Jesus in the Bible when he went to the temple and flipped over tables. He was really upset with what they were doing to his Father and his Father’s name. I was like, wait, why could Jesus be so upset that he went into the temple to flip over tables? We all have proverbial tables and roadblocks in our lives, personally and in the world around us. What does it take to get through those? We have to destroy it and build anew. For me, a disruptor is someone who understands what is in front of me is not working. I do not necessarily have to bring something new to the table but create a new one. There are small ways to do that, and there are significant ways to do it.
So, a disruptor understands that the shaking of the table has to have a purpose and that they have a plan for rebuilding. They are not afraid to throw things into chaos. We can’t be afraid of disruption. Especially at this moment, we are in a society where people feel unfulfilled, whether in their professional lives or their love lives, friendships, or relationships. It requires us to break down what isn’t working for us anymore. We are at a moment where everyone is required to break down what is not working anymore and collectively build something better.
Her Agenda: What advice would you get specifically to women who feel they’re going through a disruption in their personal or professional life? You talked about that a lot and weaved in how you figured out how to have better relationships and a better work-life balance.
Alencia Johnson: I think we feel like failures personally when things don’t work out the way that we want them to. I definitely talk a lot about relationships, and hopefully, I did in a way that none of them can identify who exactly I’m talking about. I also talk about some friendship breakdowns. I was intentionally delicate with that because sometimes, when our friendships break down, it’s not a permanent breakdown. So, I always want to be sensitive to that.
The advice is to figure it out and stop running from the discomfort. As Black women, we also have to understand that our hyper-independence and our running toward achievement is somewhat of a trauma response. I’m not saying that Black women shouldn’t continue to get an education and boss up in our professional lives, but we have to think about the reason. We have to figure out why we are doing that. Some of that is societal, but some of that is ourselves. I had to sit with, who am I? What do I want? How can I be clear about those things that I want in a world that tells me, as a Black woman, ‘I’m not allowed to say that I want those things.’ So I have to treat myself like that and move through the world, understanding the opportunities that are meant for me will come for me so long as I don’t overstay my welcome and spaces that aren’t welcoming to me, whether relationships, friendships, or professionally.
I encourage your readers to read the chapter about less is more. That is a transformative chapter for Black women just stuck in that crux, professionally and personally. We have to stay rooted in that and be okay with idle time. Sit there and figure out why you’re uncomfortable with sitting with yourself.
Her Agenda:Switching gears just a bit about entrepreneurship. So we’d love to know more about the agency that you run. How did you come to the place where you were okay with going out on your own?
Alencia Johnson: I was kind of pushed to that. I filed for my LLC while I was still at Planned Parenthood. Fast forward almost two years after Senator Warren’s campaign was over, and I was taking my little fun [employent] time off. I didn’t want to go on the Biden campaign yet. It was the middle of the pandemic. I was trying to take some time off and figure out what I wanted to do next. I started getting some phone calls from Cecile Richards. We were just talking about what I wanted to do next. Then, two weeks later, a staffer at her organization, Supermajority, called me and said, we want to hire you to do a piece of our portfolio work with these brands and entertainers and this fashion label.
I was able to lean into my network and lean into the expertise that I knew that I had. In the book, I felt pressured to announce this big agency. I felt pressured to announce all this funding. Then I realized I’m trying to keep up with perception when I’m okay with having a lean staff and only three or four clients at a time, so I have freedom of time. It took some courage in me to push back on society’s expectations that way. So I fumbled into entrepreneurship, but it was chasing after me. I was always told in my performance reviews and every job I’ve ever had [that I] have an entrepreneurial spirit. So I said, if nobody wants to play by my terms, realizing that I’m only here for the job description, let me create my dream job. I’m never gonna build a big agency. I hate managing people, and I had to be honest about that. I love making and creating big ideas. I love doing events. I love creating narratives. I lean into that, and it has boded well for me. But it took some trial and error, but it also took me listening to being pushed.
Her Agenda: Throughout your career and your book, the one theme that I found is that you created a new lane for yourself. What do you think is next for the social impact/political field?
Alencia Johnson: Yeah, so it’s very interesting. We’re having this conversation where DEI is under attack. I’ll be very honest: I think we’ve gotten so hung up on the acronym versus the actual values. For my entire career, and over the course of all of my jobs, people said, ‘Oh, well, you know, let’s add DEI to your title. Let’s add multicultural to your title.’ Let’s add all these things. I would say no because people of color are the global majority.
Women are also the majority. All these people that y’all are saying are under the DEI framework that’s actually the majority of people. We should be looking at companies and their values. Whether or not they made DEI statements, you can tell by a company’s values and whether or not they’re committed to them. So, when paying attention to that trend over the years and looking at social impact from the lens of cultural change. The way that people vote is just an extension of our values. So, how do we help people understand their values? That’s through culture. That’s through storytelling and expanding their understanding of other people.
I think the reason a lot of people harbor some feelings around immigrants and trans folks is because they don’t interact with them every day is because they’re not exposed to their lives, right? How do you do that? Through culture, through community. I believe the social impact will move that way.Change is not going to happen overnight. It’s not going to happen in four years. We’re not going to see a fully liberated society before we die. It’s going to take generations, and we have to understand what that will look like and what it will take.
Her Agenda: Anything else you would like to share?
Alencia Johnson: I will say this quickly about the book. One of my favorite chapters is the very last chapter. I encourage everybody to finish the book because it’s good. Then, most importantly, we have to release the pressure on ourselves. We need to give ourselves more grace and not look at ourselves as problems to fix but as beautifully complex human beings to get to know. I want us to stop looking at ourselves as something that needs fixing. We’re things that just need to be embraced and accepted. And to get there is a beautiful, beautiful place.
[Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]
