Jewel Johnson
Making Your Vision a Reality
With four decades of community service, Jewel Johnson has always worked from the front lines. As a wife and mother of three, Jewel started out in the 1980s as a City of Atlanta resident protecting children during the Atlanta Child Murder cases. At a time when parents were scared and fearful for their children’s safety, Jewel along with other stakeholders served as neighborhood watchdogs for children while they were at play, going to and from school bus stops. Being a resident of the Niskey Lake community where a child’s body was found, this hit home for her along with other residents.
Over the years, Jewel has led discussions at NPU meetings, town halls, community forums, and other places participating in the affairs of the neighborhood. One of her proudest accomplishments is working with the Association of West Cascade Communities that visioned and planned the business corridor enjoyed by both Southwest Atlanta and South Fulton residents today with quality businesses and merchants.
As a parent with children in Fulton County Schools, Jewel became an active member of the PTSAs at Camp Creek Middle and Westlake High School. She encouraged many parents to become involved in the school by getting to know the teachers and administrators along with urging local businesses to invest back into the schools. Along with other parents, Jewel fought for increased programming for Magnet students at Westlake along with better campus amenities.
Through the years, Jewel has become a fixture at zoning meetings, city council meetings, and neighborhood meetings. She’ll show up as an invited guest in nearby areas when people wanted to tap into her expertise for community solutions. The amazing thing in community service is there’s no official retirement, Jewel started stepping back from the front lines to let new leaders take over. Then in 2014, the new round for the City of South Fulton came up and Jewel knew it was too big to sit it out. First, her community was being considered for Atlanta annexation and she decided against it. Then, her community was illegally annexed by the city and she led a group of residents to successfully overturn the annexation placing her neighborhood back into South Fulton. During the cityhood campaign for South Fulton, Jewel provided funds for the People’s Campaign along with hitting the streets herself to convince her neighbors that cityhood was the way to go for next-level community improvement. Previously, as being unincorporated, the area had one county commissioner with an at-large chairman. Now, as a city, you have seven council members and a mayor. Jewel believed that county governance was good for local areas at the time before the explosive growth in the areas, then it was time for city councils to take over rather than having one person over such a large area.
Jewel believes Fulton County can become a premier city that is a wonderful place to live, operate a business, and visit. She wants to foster new opportunities for redevelopment, diversify the housing stock to accommodate millennials to the baby boomers, and provide a high level of service.
Jewel is a retired nurse of 44 years. She is an effective grassroots community advocate and has acquired extensive knowledge and experience in government operations over the years. Jewel continues to demonstrate outstanding leadership working with elected officials and the people through engagement and education on social and civic issues.