PBN Leaders & Achievers Awards 2025
HENRY “HANK” JOHNSON
New England Institute of Technology Business management department chair
AN AWARD-WINNING EDUCATOR, Henry “Hank” Johnson has taught and developed curriculums for business management, humanities and public-health courses for over 20 years.
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Johnson is the business management department chair at the New England Institute of Technology, where he’s worked in various capacities since joining the East Greenwich-based technical college in 2011 as an adjunct instructor. He has risen through the ranks to now lead the business management department and was hired full time by NEIT in 2016. There, he designed New England’s first regionally accredited two-year integrated bachelor’s degree in business management.
Long before teaching, Johnson was applying the skills he learned while obtaining associate and bachelor’s degrees in financial services management and an MBA, all from Johnson & Wales University, in the business world.
Johnson worked as a treasury operations specialist at Citizens Bank N.A., where over five years he progressed through increasing levels of responsibility, including managing operational mergers and acquisitions and supervising staff. He also worked as an accountant at KPMG LLP.
But all that work was put on hold when he sustained a back injury in 2006 that left him bedridden for about six months. The pause gave him time to think and reassess his career.
“I was really good at my job and making a lot of people a lot of money, but [I] was really unfulfilled,” he said. “I thought about what would make me happy.”
Having instructed business and accounting students in career management at JWU, Johnson set his sights on education. After healing from his injury, he pivoted and joined the Rhode Island Community Food Bank in 2010 as a life-skills instructor.
Four years later, he began volunteering at Education in Action and was eventually hired as its executive director. There, he built partnerships with other learning academies, oversaw fundraising and development, and managed employees while designing, implementing and promoting after-school programs in science, financial literacy and entrepreneurship.
Johnson is grateful for his professional journey and said he wouldn’t change a thing. “I had to give up a pretty successful career to start over,” he said. “I don’t regret it one bit.”
