Show Notes
"When you know to do better, you do better." - Vel Johnson
Vel grew up an Army brat, moving every two to three years, unpacking just long enough to start making friends before her father's next assignment came through.
Her late father earned a Bronze Star across two tours in Vietnam, and the discipline he ran the household with became the discipline she'd later run a business with.
What could have been destabilizing instead taught her to build community fast, wherever she landed, a skill that turned out to be the whole job once she got into PR.
She left a stable career in Florida's legislative arena, sold her house, and started Vasaj Communications in a city where she knew no one, at the start of the Great Recession.
No plan B. Within two years, Black Enterprise magazine profiled her as "The Small Business Catalyst," unpaid, unsolicited, just a phone call she almost mistook for a prank.
Two decades later, she led statewide bicentennial celebrations with over 200 events and got authors flown overseas off a single press release.
But the hardest thing she's done wasn't a campaign.
In 2024, while running the Tallahassee-Leon County Bicentennial for 300,000 residents, her mother passed away.
She buried her, drove five hours back, and was at work the next Monday.
Months later, she had hip replacement surgery and kept working through recovery, because the mission wasn't done.
"I had to put the grief on hold. But we all have to decide whether we're going to keep showing up. That's what I decided to do."
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