Until May 2004 she served as a consultant to the National Legal Department of the ACLU, where she helped develop a strategic plan for the organization on racial justice issues. From September 2001 until September 2003, she served as counsel to Senator Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee where she worked on civil rights, judicial nominations, religion and first amendment issues. Prior to that Ms. Johnson was an assistant counsel for four years at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund where she worked on a range of issues including higher education affirmative action, employment discrimination, education policy, and welfare and low-wage employment policy. Ms. Johnson graduated in 1995 from Stanford Law School where she was Order of the Coif, and received her B.A. in Literature Cum Laude from Yale University in 1989.