Lecture Speaker
Eric Anthony Johnson joined Aeon as president and CEO in February 2022. He brings extensive academic and professional experience to Aeon. He holds a Ph.D. in urban affairs and public policy from the University of Delaware and is an alumnus of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design Advanced Management Development Program in Real Estate. He also holds an MBA from the University of Tennessee. Most recently, he served as chief of economic development, housing, and neighborhood services at the City of Dallas, where he led efforts to create a $100 million fund to support affordable housing, and adoption of the city’s comprehensive economic development policy.
Johnson was born and raised in New Orleans and has worked in urban development in cities across the country. He is not new to Minnesota. Johnson earned a Master of Public Administration from Minnesota State University, Mankato in 1996. From 2018 to 2020, he was community development director at the City of Bloomington. There he led the creation of the city’s opportunity housing ordinance and $15 million affordable housing trust fund. The fund’s first investment was in Blooming Meadows South, a property Aeon acquired to preserve 306 affordable homes.
Growing up, Eric Anthony Johnson was told that his destiny included drugs, crime and crack. But he chose basketball, books, and his brain, instead.
Growing up in New Orleans amid the 1970s and 80s crack epidemic, young Eric Johnson lived life with his head on a swivel, fighting off the thugs and seeing people murdered right in front of his face.
That boy saw the road of drugs and violence for the dead-end that it was—so he blazed his own trail, a trail that wouldn’t have him end up on the nightly news with a bullet hole in his back.
Eric had the courage to not go with the crowd, and as a man he became a leader. Today the boy who grew up without a true home is now one of America’s leading forces in the realm of affordable housing.
In The Origin of Strength, Eric takes you for a walk down his road of inspiration—so you may find yours…
Read his harrowing story in this real-life action thriller, “The Origin of Strength.
