- One word to describe yourself: List-maker
- Alma Mater: University of Oxford, Warwick Business School, Harvard Kennedy School
- Favorite book: “The Isles” by Norman Davies
- Favorite TV show: “Narcos”
- Favorite movie: “Empire of the Sun”
- Favorite hobby(s): Watching an England rugby match with a pint of Guinness and a traditional English breakfast.
- Fun fact about yourself: I appeared on national television as a contestant on a dating show.
- Favorite station or stop that you have ever visited or frequent (and why): Staplehurst, Kent, UK. An unassuming village railway station, known locally as the site of a rail crash involving Charles Dickens, but known to me as my lifeline from childhood to independence in my teenage years. Happiest of memories sharing the 18.5 minute each way commute every day (school in the week, then sport and socializing on weekends) with boyhood friends who remain my closest friends today.
- Favorite route you have ever ridden or frequent (and why): Top deck of #14 London Bus from Piccadilly Circus to home (Putney), through iconic Georgian and Victorian London, from the West End, past Hyde Park through Kensington and across the Thames. Any time of day, it's great to watch the world go by in the greatest city in the world.
Jayme Johnson, under the chief operating officer of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), has built the authority’s office of strategic initiatives from the ground up with a goal of achieving dramatic improvements in safety, efficiency and delivery across WMATA’s operations. Johnson’s mandate is to change business as usual across WMATA’s operational frontline, namely rail, bus, police, paratransit and support services. Johnson recruited a team of more than 35 mixed employee and consultant staff, delivering an ambitious program of over 20 organizational change projects.
A flagship initiative of Johnson’s office is the 3% Challenge. Johnson launched and leads the initiative to help to close the multimillion-dollar gap between current operational spending growth and the three percent annual growth cap imposed by WMATA’s jurisdictional funders. Johnson’s actions to break down silos and redefine the conversation helped to drive a culture shift at WMATA towards personal fiscal responsibility and tracking projects’ impact on the organization’s budget.
Johnson’s team has also delivered on WMATA’s main priority of dramatically improving the state of the rail system. He led WMATA’s strategic action plan to increase ‘wrench time’ for work crews overnight on the track. Johnson and his team took a data-driven approach to reform procedures and improve management practices. This work resulted in crews gaining, on average, 15 percent more time overnight to do their work, adding thousands of extra man-hours for capital improvements and maintenance each year at no extra cost.
WMATA is an industry leader in testing a new technology to manage the safety risk of third rail power. Drawing together multiple departments and outside experts, Johnson coordinated the design, installation and evaluation of the prototype. This Tagging Relay technology is a new system of de-energizing and restoring third rail power that is simpler and more efficient than WMATA’s current procedures. The prototype, if successful, will be a game-changer for WMATA. Johnson is leading the effort to determine beyond doubt whether it meets and surpasses safety standards.
Johnson’s team designed and delivered the Chief Operating Officer’s Leadership Program. The program brings a systematic approach to reskilling and inspiring all managers and supervisors across operations. Never seen before at WMATA, the program brings operational improvement in the short term and improves recruitment and retention in the medium term. It equips and empowers leaders to solve problems, make decisions and lead others to do the same. Outcomes include managers spending less time behind desks and more time with the people they lead; middle management receiving training on core management skills that enable them to be the best leaders they can be; and enhanced training opportunities to retain the best leaders and build for the future.
To successfully execute these initiatives, Johnson created a different type of team, comprising diverse and nontraditional members. The team stands out for being majority women. To bring a unique combination of perspectives and experiences to bear on priority transit problems, Johnson proactively sought business experience and skills outside transit to present alternatives, force change and new thinking. Johnson has cultivated his own network of public policy and analytics graduate schools including Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown and Harvard, so he can recruit highly qualified, driven data analysts and change managers, who otherwise might not have considered transit as a career. By design, Johnson proactively recruits talent as a strategic pipeline for the organization: After a period of high impact delivery for Strategic Initiatives, individuals then transfer to leadership positions across the organization to embed new thinking, attitudes and sustained improvement in other departments.
Johnson is an adjunct professor at the School of Public Affairs at American University. He is a design thinking practitioner and member of the Federal Innovation Network. He is an organizer within the British community in D.C., and volunteers as a member of his local elementary school’s PTA. He served as president of the Harvard Kennedy School DC Alumni Council, leading more than 50 events on public policy and service.
“[I enjoy] bringing together a diverse, dynamic group of individuals - all with experience outside transit - to lead organizational change and tackle some of the most challenging problems facing operations. Our team recruits talent into the organization and is a promotion pipeline to other WMATA departments. The best feeling at work is being inspired by colleagues who are performing to their maximum and being the best they can be.”
“Delivering results [is the most challenging part of the job]. My team was formed to improve safety, customer service and efficiency across operations departments. Results are only possible if we secure buy in from senior leaders, identify the right colleagues to own the solutions that we build with them, and communicate in ways that establish and build trust across everyone involved. It's a continual balancing act of getting these things right.”
“[A key achievement is] publication of an article in an academic journal. I applied to be a Fulbright Scholar at George Mason University because publishing an academic article was a personal ambition. Conducting research alone for extended periods was far outside my comfort zone. I had to change strategies on numerous occasions to make progress. I persisted and finally got there.”
“Do the basics brilliantly. No vision, strategy, great idea or common-sense solution is possible unless your team or organization has the basics in place. Running productive meetings, following through on actions, responding to emails promptly, meeting deadlines - all seem minor in isolation - but together are the basis for effective delivery and progress.”
“Public transit can increase economic mobility, reduce social inequality and mitigate climate change. The industry has so much potential to change society for the better, yet remains relatively untapped and underdeveloped in North America. I love fighting for the common good, in a field that has the most potential of all public sector fields to improve and sustain the society in which we live.”
