Sheila Johnson biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Entrepreneur Sheila Crump Johnson was born on January 25, 1949, in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. Her father, a neurosurgeon who worked for the Veterans Administration, and her mother, an accountant, were both accomplished pianists. Johnson inherited her parents' musical talents, beginning to play the violin seriously at the age of nine. Johnson also displayed flashes of her future entrepreneurial spirit as a child. She crafted purses out of oatmeal boxes and potholders, going door-to-door to sell them to her neighbors.

Due to her father's job with the Veterans Administration, Johnson's family was often on the move, relocating 12 times during her childhood before finally settling down for good in Maywood, Illinois, just outside of Chicago.

An accomplished young musician, in high school Johnson served as the concertmaster of the Illinois All-State Choir, and upon graduating in 1967 she received a full scholarship to study music at the University of Illinois. Her assigned mentor during orientation week was an upperclassman named Robert Johnson, and the pair quickly fell in love. Two years later, in 1969, they married. Sheila Johnson sewed her own wedding dress from an "idiot-proof" McCall's pattern and the ceremony cost a grand total of $50.

Black Entertainment Television

In 1971, two years after her marriage, Johnson graduated from Illinois with a bachelor's degree in music performance and education. After her graduation, Johnson moved to Washington, D.C. There she landed a job teaching violin at the prestigious Sidwell Friends School, while her husband took a job with the Public Broadcasting Corporation. To supplement her meager teacher's salary, Sheila Johnson also began teaching private violin lessons out of her home.

The lessons grew into a successful enterprise, and when Johnson had enrolled 100 students she quit her job at Sidwell Friends to devote all her attention to private teaching. She took her students on several tours around the world, including a stop in Jordan where they performed for the King and Queen. And it was by running her own music instruction business that Johnson developed into a shrewd businesswoman. "I learned tax law, how to deduct for the space, even for toilet paper," she later recalled. "I always kept good records."

While Johnson concentrated on her music business, her husband managed to secure a $500,000 investment from cable TV mogul John Malone, allowing Robert and Sheila Johnson to co-found their own cable TV network, Black Entertainment Television (BET) in 1979. A decade later, in 1989, Sheila Johnson abandoned her music business to join BET full time as head of community relations.