Summary: | Entrepreneur Sheila Crump Johnson was born on January 25, 1949 in Pennsylvania. Her family relocated to Maywood, Illinois where she graduated from Proviso High School in 1966. Johnson then earned her B.A. degree in music from the University of Illinois, where she met her first husband and business partner, Robert Johnson. In 1975, while serving as a music teacher at the Washington, D.C. private school, Sidwell Friends, she founded a 140-member youth orchestra, Young Strings in Action. In 1980, Johnson and Robert Johnson co-founded Black Entertainment Television (BET). In 1999, Johnson left BET to pursue other interests and to guide her daughter's equestrian career. She founded the Salamander Inn & Spa, a French country resort in Middleburg, Virginia, as well as Salamander Hospitality, a hotel resort and spa management firm. In 2005, Johnson became an owner of the WNBA's Washington Mystics. She purchased the Innisbrook Golf Resort in Tampa, Florida in 2007.
|