Fisk Johnson earned his Johnson MBA in 1984, one of his five Cornell degrees. He comes from a long line of Cornellians, including his siblings, parents, grandfather, and others.
Mr. Johnson is the chairman and chief executive officer of SC Johnson and the fifth-generation Johnson family leader of the 135-year-old company. After Cornell, he joined the company in 1987 and has served in a variety of senior-level management and marketing positions, both domestically and internationally.
He serves on the Office of the US Trade Representatives Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiation (since 2002) and the Consumer Goods Forum Board of Directors. He recently served as a member of the US President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology from 2019 to 2021. He also served on the boards of Conservation International, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and Conservation International’s Center for Environmental Leadership in Business.
Mr. Johnson served on the Cornell University board of trustees from 1993 to 2001 and now is a Trustee Emeritus and Presidential Counselor. In 2009, he was named Cornell’s Robert S. Hatfield Fellow in Economic Education and delivered the university’s annual Hatfield Lecture. In 2013, he was honored by Johnson with the Dean L. Joseph Thomas Leadership Award. In 2017, the College of Business was renamed the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business in recognition of a generous gift from Fisk and SC Johnson. Mr. Johnson delivered Johnson’s 33rd annual Lewis H. Durland Memorial Lecture in 2021.
The Johnson family’s inspiring generosity reaches across Cornell, including gifts from Herbert Fisk Johnson ’22 to name the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art in 1967, from Samuel C. Johnson ’50 and Imogene Powers Johnson ’52 to name the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management in 1984, and to name the Imogene Powers Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity at the Laboratory of Ornithology in 2000.