Shannon Johnson earned a masters from Stanford's Liberal Arts program, with a thesis entitled "'We were all White once': Race, Polygamy, and the Salvific Mormon Family." Her BA from Brigham Young University is in English literature; she wrote an honors thesis there on "Emily Dickinson: Transcendental Trinitarian." She worked in admin at Columbia University and as an English teacher in Japan and Egypt before taking time away to raise four children. Shannon has been at The Europe Center since 2014, and joined the staff at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law in 2020.