Sandra K. Johnson, Ph. D.

Sandra K. Johnson, Ph. D., Director

Dr. Johnson has served as a director of Regional since April 2020. She is the founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Technology Officer of Global Mobile Finance, Inc., a fintech startup company based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, since 2018. In addition, since 2014, she she has served as the Chief Executive Officer of SKJ Visioneering, LLC, a technology consulting company. [Dr. Johnson currently serves as a Visiting Scholar at North Carolina A&T State University, a role she has held since February 2020.] From November 2012 to February 2014, Dr. Johnson served as the Chief Technology Officer for IBM Central, East and West Africa. Prior to 2014, she spent 11 years as a Senior Technical Staff Member of the IBM Systems and Technology Group, serving in various roles, including Business Development Executive for IBM Middle East and Africa, Chief Technology Officer for IBM’s Global Small and Medium Business, and the Linux Performance Architect. Dr. Johnson has conducted extensive research and published her findings in a number of computer-related and information technology areas, she has authored and co-authored over 80 publications, and she was part of the design team that developed the prototype for the IBM Scalable Parallel Processor (SP2), the base machine for “Deep Blue,” IBM’s world-famous chess machine. Dr. Johnson was a member of the IBM Academy of Technology, a group consisting of the top 1% of IBM’s over 250,000 technical professionals. She has also received numerous technical and professional awards and is an IBM Master Inventor with over 40 patents issued and pending. Dr. Johnson earned her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Southern University, Stanford University, and Rice University, respectively. She is the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, with a concentration in computer engineering, in the United States. Dr. Johnson is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (“IEEE”) and the Association for Computing Machinery (“ACM”). She is also an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Distinguished Engineer.