Kia Johnson is the senior director, PK-12 Professional Development and Evaluations at Center for Applied Linguistics.
Kia serves as the senior director of PK-12 Professional Development and Evaluations at the Center for Applied Linguistics. In her role, she leads a team that supports teachers, schools, and districts across the country in creating equitable learning environments for multilingual learners through research-based professional development, coaching, and program evaluation.
Kia chose LMU’s Ed.D. program because its focus on Educational Leadership for Social Justice felt like it was speaking directly to her. She had just finished an African American political leadership program that lit a fire in her to push for systems-level change, and she needed a doctoral program that aligned with both her advocacy and her lived experiences. From her early days as a paraprofessional and bus driver to now leading national work for multilingual learners, she’d always believed in leadership rooted in service. LMU gave her the space to grow into that kind of leader.
Kia’s research, “Bless Your Heart” Leadership: A Contextually Responsive Approach to Title III Implementation in Low-Incidence Districts of a New Destination State, explored how Title III coordinators in Virginia’s low-incidence districts lead English learner programs with limited resources, competing priorities, and often little formal guidance. Through interviews and document analysis, she examined how these leaders respond to their local contexts, enact equity-minded decisions, and build systems of support for multilingual learners. From this study, she developed the “Bless Your Heart” leadership framework, a contextually responsive approach grounded in distributive justice, Southern cultural norms, and adaptive leadership. This framework highlights how care, constraint, and creativity intersect in rural education leadership for multilingual learner equity.
The Ed.D. program helped her turn lived experience into liberatory leadership. It gave her the language, mentorship, and scholarly grounding to advocate more powerfully for multilingual learners, especially in under-resourced communities. Personally, it gave her support during deep grief and purpose during burnout. Professionally, it reshaped how she showed up as a justice-centered leader. She now moves with deeper clarity, conviction, and care for the communities she serves.
Kia pursued a doctorate for her five daughters so they’d know what resilience looks like in real life. And she did it with her husband by her side, holding it all down every step of the way. She carried the weight of grief while pushing forward, having lost both of her parents during this journey. Their memory fueled her determination to finish what she started. She holds this degree with deep gratitude, profound love, and an even deeper sense of responsibility to lead with purpose and leave a legacy they would be proud of.