Sep 22, 2026 · 54 min · 11 segments
Zach sits down with Johanna Jones, President & CEO of ITSMF, to discuss Black leadership, career development, and the future of leadership in Corporate America. Johanna has held several leadership…
Johanna JonesGuestZach NunnHostYou know, ITSMF has been moving Black executives, particularly in the tech space, but just leadership period, up the ladder since 1996, nearly three decades now.
Shoot, actually, it's coming up on the 30th year.
30th
here.
Come on now.
When you look when you took the presidency.
Right.
What did you walk in believing the orc needed to become next? And how has that thesis held up against the last couple of years?
So I have spent nearly 30 years in executive leadership running nonprofit organizations.
I am a person that goes into small organizations that have potential and creates million-dollar opportunities.
I take teams of potential and turn them into high-powered executives that go on to run universities and Fortune 500 companies, and I am a fixer.
that takes what some people see as problems and design systems that will work consistently.
And so this organization had a powerful reputation amongst a smaller number of technologists that were familiar with them.
Great leadership academies, powerful membership association, but rather small.
25 years into this small organization, under-resourced, but massive opportunity.
The most powerful titans of technology represented amongst its program alum, founders, but still had this big mission of increasing representation in technology, executive leadership, and developing leaders, mind, body, and soul, and creating barrier-free opportunities.
And so I came in with this vision to grow the organization to double revenue, double membership, double number of people going into our programs, increase our visibility, and achieve that in five years.
And then 18 months ago, that vision towards continued growth Dismantle by a combination of legal and financial policies and laws and decisions that have made our work extraordinarily more difficult than it was when I joined in 2021.
You know, ITSMF has been moving Black executives, particularly in the tech space, but just leadership period, up the ladder since 1996, nearly three decades now.
Shoot, actually, it's coming up on the 30th year.
30th
here.
Come on now.
When you look when you took the presidency.
Right.
What did you walk in believing the orc needed to become next? And how has that thesis held up against the last couple of years?
So I have spent nearly 30 years in executive leadership running nonprofit organizations.
I am a person that goes into small organizations that have potential and creates million-dollar opportunities.
I take teams of potential and turn them into high-powered executives that go on to run universities and Fortune 500 companies, and I am a fixer.
that takes what some people see as problems and design systems that will work consistently.
And so this organization had a powerful reputation amongst a smaller number of technologists that were familiar with them.
Great leadership academies, powerful membership association, but rather small.
25 years into this small organization, under-resourced, but massive opportunity.
The most powerful titans of technology represented amongst its program alum, founders, but still had this big mission of increasing representation in technology, executive leadership, and developing leaders, mind, body, and soul, and creating barrier-free opportunities.
And so I came in with this vision to grow the organization to double revenue, double membership, double number of people going into our programs, increase our visibility, and achieve that in five years.
And then 18 months ago, that vision towards continued growth Dismantle by a combination of legal and financial policies and laws and decisions that have made our work extraordinarily more difficult than it was when I joined in 2021.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.