About the Scholarship
The Johnson Scholarship benefits graduating seniors of Columbia Central High School matriculating at an institution of higher learning and pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering or math, by providing a scholarship award of $10,000; $5,000 for their first year of college, and an additional $5,000 to support their 2nd year of study should they remain in good standing and on-track to completing their degree. The scholarship will support the most promising and talented graduates of Columbia Central High School, whether they stay in Tennessee to study or go further afield.
A goal of the Johnson Scholarship Committee is to create a network of “Johnson Scholars” that will serve as a mentoring network to help recent graduates navigate their next career steps. The Johnson Scholarship Committee will request that recipients agree to share their contact information with all other current, future, and past recipients, and will endeavor to help facilitate such networking.
Scholarship Selection
The Johnson Scholarship Committee—consisting of three members with ties to CHS—will publicize, accept and deliberate on applications. The scholarship cycle includes an announcement (February), application deadline, award announcements at Honors Day, and awards distributed through Columbia Central High School in Summer of the year awarded.
About the Donor
Chris “CJ” Johnson is an alumnus of Columbia Central High School. As a member of the Class of 1998, he was active with the Academic Team, Band and Math & Science programs.
After CHS, CJ attended MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he graduated with a degree in Aerospace Engineering in 2002, and a MBA, specializing in Entrepreneurship & Innovation, in 2008.
CJ is currently founder and general partner at XLIX Ventures, a technology incubator focused on building ideas into companies across software, health care, and defense sectors.
CJ’s first entrepreneurial venture was 3Play Media, which he started with his friends at MIT in 2007. Now located in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, 3Play provides closed captioning and other accessibility tools for over 4,000 customers across the education, government, online media, and corporate training sectors. He has multiple patents granted and pending for efficient captioning techniques and large-scale workforce management tools.
CJ is active in the Boston startup community, serving as a mentor for the TechStars startup accelerator since 2012, and in formal advisory roles for startups in the Web/IT space. Previously, he worked as a consultant for Accenture, signal analyst for Metis Design Corporation, and project manager at MIT OpenCourseWare.