PROFILE   |   Jim Johnsen

Jim Johnsen Senior Fellow

Jim Johnsen brings a wealth of experience as a system leader, consultant, and scholar to his role at NASH, which is to support leadership in public college and university systems through training, consulting, and research. Jim’s current position at the executive search firm Greenwood Asher provides unique insights into the qualities needed for effective system leadership. His recent edited volume Public University Systems: Leveraging Scale in Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024) explores how systems can provide societal impact greater than the sum of their institutional parts. His over 20 years of experience in the University of Minnesota and University of Alaska systems, which includes service as system president during a severe state funding crisis, provides a practical connection to the challenging work of system leadership. Jim’s connection to NASH is longstanding, having served on the Board and as a member of the team that developed NASH’s Power of Systems initiative. Jim earned degrees from the University of California Santa Cruz, the University of Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania and is Affiliated Faculty Emerita at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California Berkeley.