ST. LOUIS, Mo. – With more than 40 years of experience with the Boy
Scouts of America, Brad Johnson has seen it all and done it all from his
beginnings in cub scouts all the way up to serving as district commissioner. Though
some of his memories of the fun activities and adventures have begun to fade
with time, it was the lessons he learned and skills he gained that have stuck
with him the longest and have been most beneficial as he has made his way
through life.
As
a corporate director of program management for Sigma-Aldrich Corporation in St.
Louis, Johnson was able to lean heavily on his scouting background to help lead
his department.
“Scouting
became important to me because it helped to develop me into a strong
self-starter,” said Johnson. “It helped to kind of mold my leadership skills
and the leadership abilities that I have today. Sure, I remember how to use a
compass and map, first aid and all of that kind of stuff; those weren’t the
important things though. It was the underlying issues. It was personal
initiative, integrity and leadership. Those were the things that I hung on to that
became important to me.”
Even
before he reached his supervisory role, Johnson saw the impact of lessons
learned through running National Youth Leadership Training (NYLT) camps and
serving as a patrol leader during his teen years.
“I
learned more in scouting than I did in my management classes in MBA school,”
Johnson said. “And frankly, I found that my background experience in scouting
made it easier because a lot of those theories were already engrained. I found
management school was easy because all of those concepts I was learning, I had
scouting experiences that I could lean on and say, ‘That’s what they were
talking about.’
“I
really believe that the scouting experience is so important in developing
fundamentals; how you deal with people, how you handle people. And the reason
that I’m still involved with scouting is because it had such a strong bearing
on the professional I turned out to be.”
Johnson’s
journey in scouting began in Clarksville, Tenn., when he joined cub scouts.
When his dad returned from Vietnam, the family packed up and moved west to
California. It was there in the small town of Livermore that scouting would
make the biggest impact on Johnson’s life, taking him from a quiet boy to a
confident adult.
“I
joined a scout troop run by a guy named Cliff Walker,” Johnson recalled. “We
went on our first backpacking trip and it was called a flume trip. They dropped
us off at a location and we hiked five miles to our campsite. Now, I’m 12 years
old. If I characterized myself at the time, because we moved frequently, I was
on the verge of becoming an introvert. I wasn’t overly aggressive; not out of
shape but not, you know a sports guy. We hiked in the rain for five miles along
this platform on a mountain that was only 18 inches wide, and it was hard. It
was pouring down rain and it was cold. I had another guy in my class who was
the bully and the sports guy who cried the entire weekend and I told myself at
the end of that trip that scouting was for me because I could stand up and be
right there with him.
“We
did lots and lots of hard things. We got cold, our feet got wet, we had hard
times, but I grew while I was out there and so scouting became an important
part of my life right then and there. I learned to love the outdoors and I
learned to love the challenge. It helped me to develop as a kid who wasn’t
really all that good in sports. I could be good at this, simply by trying
really hard and by sticking to it.”
Johnson
reached First Class in Livermore before his family moved again, this time
overseas to an American military base in Stuttgart, Germany. Joining a troop in
the Transatlantic Council, Johnson eventually earned his Eagle in 1974 and was
elected into the Order of the Arrow. As one might imagine, scouting activities
differed slightly in Europe and included outings such as hiking through the
German Alps and camping in Pisa, Italy with the Leaning Tower of Pisa right
outside his tent.
Johnson
and his family eventually returned stateside to Woodbridge, Va., where he
remained active in a local troop and ran the NYLT (then called JLTC) program
for two years before aging out.
Though
he’s now enjoying retirement, Johnson continues his involvement with the BSA
and recently joined the Boy Scouts of America’s STEM Program as the Gravois
Trail chairman. An acronym for science, technology,
engineering and mathematics, STEM is the BSA’s initiative to engage its youth members in skills
and experiences in these areas and help them develop the STEM skills critical
for the competitive world marketplace. These disciplines are considered by many
to be the foundation of an advanced society. In many forums-including
political, governmental, and academic-the strength of the STEM workforce is
viewed as an indicator of a nation's ability to sustain itself.
Johnson’s
background with Sigma-Aldrich, which manufactures and distributes
research-grade chemicals primarily to academic settings and research, helped
lay the foundation for his interest in science and technology. As a corporate director
of program management, Johnson supervised a group of people who were ultimately
responsible for developing and deploying systems to make business processes
more efficient.
“Those highly technical skills are key talents
necessary to perform what needs to get done in the future,” Johnson said. “You
look at the countries who are putting out people with those skills, it’s not
the U.S. Many people serving in high-tech roles are coming to the U.S. to get
the education so it is not the education system. It is that young people just
don’t have an interest in these areas. People at six years old don’t say, ‘I
want to be an engineer.’ So maybe we need to start early and kind of
demonstrate to the young people what is cool about these areas of focus. If we
do that and stimulate interest, maybe they will naturally go into academic
programs in these high-tech areas.
“That
is why I am involved. I think that’s important (to get young people interested
in those areas). The outdoor experience, the hallmark of scouting, is a method.
It is not the reason for scouting. Scouting doesn’t exist to teach people how
to go camping. Scouting exists to teach young people how to be better people,
how to make ethical decisions, to be self-reliant and to learn appropriate
leadership skills. Scouting uses fun things to teach those skills such as
camping and it is the same thing with STEM. If we can build a program that
makes science and technology fun, then I think we can help stimulate interest
and excellence in these areas.”
It
sounds like a large task, but Johnson remains optimistic in the BSA’s efforts
and is once again looking forward to the new challenge presented before him.
“Today
I feel like I can pretty much do anything because I have,” said Johnson. “I owe
all that to scouting. It made a big difference in my life.”
