As associate vice provost, Joanna Johnson provides strategic vision and guidance to the Writing Center. With two decades of leadership experience, Johnson has directed a writing department and writing programs, including writing centers, since 2005. She is also an associate professor of English at UC Davis.

She taught graduate and undergraduate research and writing courses, including graduate research ethics and writing pedagogy, undergraduate business communication, first-year and upper-division composition, literature and writing in STEM.

She delivered numerous conference presentations and national workshops on writing across the curriculum, scientific writing, grant application writing and artificial intelligence. Johnson’s publications include the book, Topographies of Caribbean Writing, Race and the British Countryside (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Her most recent article, "Race, Writing, and Research: Leveraging WAC to Reduce Disparities in Research Funding and Publication," was published in WAC Journal in 2023.