Johnson's technical background gives him the expertise to apply mathematical modeling and management science in a rigorous way to public service operations. A graduate of the dual degree engineering program offered by Morehouse College in association with the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Johnson earned undergraduate degrees in mathematics and French, and a master's degree in electrical engineering. Johnson later earned a master's degree in operations research from the University of California at Berkeley, and a doctorate in operations research at Northwestern University.
As a graduate student, Johnson grew intrigued with the idea of using management science and operations research to improve public services. After learning about a court-ordered, Section 8-type program that was being tried in the Chicago area during the early 1990s, Johnson decided to devote himself to bringing management science and operations research to public housing.
The idea for Housing eCounselor resulted from decision planning model development he had done for public housing agencies to help them make efficient uses of their resources. Instead of applying decision models enabling an entire public housing department to do better planning, Johnson focused on the perspective of how individual users of public housing programs could have improved services, leading him to conceive of Housing eCounselor.
The Web address of the Pittsburgh Housing eCounselor is <www.housing-ecounselor.org>.
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