Angie Staley Johnson
The ultra-organized Angie Johnson expects to host more than 200,000 visitors at this year’s Riverfest — that is, if her third baby doesn’t decide to make an early arrival.
The chairman of the 35th annual Riverfest has a little more on her mind than the usual concerns of weather, crowds, security, performers, vendors, toilets and trash.
Angie Johnson is due to give birth about two weeks after the three-day festival opens May 25.
“It has definitely been a family affair this year,” Johnson says with a smile, one hand resting on her very pregnant stomach.
Those who know Johnson best say she combines energy, organization and compassion with a love of community service. She has spent the last year overseeing the festival’s vast volunteer effort in what most describe as a full-time unpaid job.
Now she just has to be convinced to dial it back a bit during the festival itself.
“We have her on lockdown,” Deanna Korte, the festival’s executive director, says. “If anybody sees her walking, she’s in trouble. And we have a ‘code pink’ just in case the baby decides to come early.”
“She doesn’t know the meaning of the word rest,” says Shelia Vaught, a former Riverfest chairman who has known Johnson since she was a child. “She just works.”
Johnson’s husband, Jordan, recalls chasing his wife around the festival grounds last year when she was the Riverfest co-chairman.
“If we don’t hold her to it, she’ll go all out like she always does,” he says. “Literally on her schedule, she has nap times. She’d be embarrassed if I told you. But you’ve got to corral her somehow.”
THOUSANDS OF VOLUNTEERS
Riverfest is and always has been volunteer driven. Riverfest Inc., the nonprofit that runs it, has one full-time employee — Korte — and four part-time employees. Nearly everything else is done by a 230-person volunteer committee whose members work throughout the year. Some 3,000 more volunteers pitch in during the festival. Last year, Riverfest drew about 260,000 visitors, making it the state’s biggest event of its kind and generating an estimated economic impact of $33 million, according to the city.
Johnson, 33, who is in charge of the volunteer committee and also sits on the festival’s 30-member advisory board, seems to have been a multitasker from an early age.
Born in Little Rock and raised on the city’s southwest side, she grew up taking dance lessons, playing softball, serving on the student council and cheerleading squad and participating in her church youth group.
She went to public elementary, middle and high schools except for 1 1⁄2 years in a private school.
“I asked to go back after my fifth-grade year,” she says. “I had a good group of girlfriends. I was a very involved student and I didn’t want to give that up. I still have lots of great friends from high school.”
Johnson’s maiden name, Staley, is well known in the business community. Her grandfather, R.E. Staley, started Staley Electric in his garage in 1951 as a residential electrical contractor. Under R.E. and Johnson’s father, Ed, the company grew into a na-
tional contractor for commercial and industrial customers, specializing in point-of-sales technology. Today, in addition to its Little Rock headquarters, Staley Inc. has 11 more offices around the country. Johnson’s older brother, Brent, is chairman of the board of directors, and Johnson sits on the family advisory council.
“Being 19 months apart, we’re quite close,” she says.
Johnson says her own career path was set in a different direction early on, in part because of a cousin who was born without the use of his arms.
“I watched him to learn to use a telephone,” she says. “I watched him learn to live as normally as he can. I knew I always wanted to work with children. I knew that at an early age.”
She earned a degree in exercise science and bio-mechanics from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. After returning to Little Rock, Johnson worked for her family’s company while earning a master’s degree in occupational therapy from the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.
She spent almost six years evaluating 3- to 5-year-old children with development disabilities for the Little Rock, North Little Rock and Pulaski County Special school districts. It was part of her job to prepare plans of care and present them to the children’s families.
Johnson “just kind of put herself in the shoes of the families who needed the services,” says Katy Hunt, a speech therapist who worked with her. “Angie has the biggest heart of anybody that I know. I know she would do anything for those families. Not just the children, but the whole family.”
During her sophomore year at UA, a friend set Johnson up on a blind date with a political science major from Bryant named Jordan Johnson. Angie and Jordan knew of each other through high school athletic circles, and soon discovered that their fathers had grown up in the same neighborhood in Little Rock.
They married a month after graduating from UA. Johnson started working part time after the birth of her son, Patterson, who’s 5, and quit altogether when her son, Keeton, who’s 2, was born.
“It was a hard decision for me because I’m very driven,” Johnson says. “It made sense for our family. I feel like I will go back to it at some point.”
It’s a busy household. Jordan Johnson is spokesman for the William J. Clinton Foundation, a vice president at the Cranford Johnson Robinson Woods advertising agency and chairman of the Riverfest advisory committee. He said the couple love working together on events like Riverfest.
“There’s never any time at our house to be lazy,” he said. “If she weren’t pregnant, there’d be another ball in the air. This is just her.”
In the meantime, she has assumed a bigger role with Staley Inc.
“At this point, I’m just kind of learning more about the business to be prepared in the future,” she says. “I am sitting in on board meetings.”
She has also taken on a few special projects, including helping her brother design and decorate the company’s new 20,000-square-foot headquarters in southwest Little Rock. KIDS AND TOILET PAPER Johnson’s portfolio as a volunteer is long and mostly geared toward kids. She has given her time to Arkansas Children’s Hospital, Camp Aldersgate, the Easter Sunrise Service and the Little Rock Junior League’s annual Holiday House fundraiser, for which she served as chairman of the merchants committee.
She joined the Riverfest volunteer committee a decade ago at the invitation of Ashley Parker, the friend who’d introduced her to her husband (and the 2009 Riverfest chairman).
Johnson has worked in various volunteer capacities for Riverfest, including media relations, sponsor relations and logistics. “That’s where I learned a lot of the behind-the-scenes,” she says. In 2010, she was tapped to be co-chairman of the 2011 festival, which is actually an apprenticeship for serving as chairman the next year. Chairmen are picked by the festival advisory board with input from previous chairmen and Korte.
“It’s crucial that the chairman is the leader of that [volunteer] committee,” Korte says.
“I have to know that she’s being a cheerleader for them, just keeping them motivated.”
Planning for Riverfest starts the day after the previous one ends. In addition to leading meetings of the volunteer committee, the chairman has innumerable smaller meetings and conversations with Korte and individual volunteers.
“I can say we’ve talked nearly every single day in regards to Riverfest,” Korte says. “Then she sits at home for two or three hours in the morning and night working on it. It’s just a huge organizational task for her to take, but she does it with a smile on her face.”
Indeed, Johnson is known for having a bit of fun. Korte says that one early morning during the festival a few years back, Johnson and Parker came to pick her up at a downtown hotel where volunteers and workers were staying. The two had been taking some good-natured grief from employees of the company that provided the festival’s portable toilets. Finding a utility vehicle that belonged to the company parked outside, Johnson and Parker “completely toilet-papered it to where they couldn’t get in,” Korte says.
“That was complete sleep deprivation,” Johnson explains. “We needed a little pick-me-up.”
BABY STANLEY Johnson first experienced Riverfest as a 5- or 6-year-old dance student performing on the family stage. Volunteering there taught her the value it brings to families and introduced her to “a group of people I never would have had the opportunity to know otherwise.”
She thinks a new free family zone between the Clinton Presidential Center and Heifer International will be a big hit this year, and she’s proud that the festival will benefit the Arkansas Food Bank by collecting cans of food and donations for the second year in a row.
One thing the ultra-organized Johnson admits she hadn’t planned on was having another baby. “We thought we were very finished,” she says. “Surprise! We’re having another one, which we’re grateful for.”
The official due date for the baby, a girl who will be named Staley Catherine, is June 17. Doctors have told Johnson a June 12 date seems more likely.
She still plans to spend as much time in the festival’s Statehouse Convention Center command center as necessary, and to be ferried about the festival via golf cart when possible. She says the festival could go on fine without her, and her real job is thanking all the volunteers who make that happen.
“I have definitely had to evaluate throughout this process, what do I need to do, and what can I cut back on? We have such a strong committee that it’s not a problem for me to ask for help, whether it’s help rolling T-shirts or taking on an extra project.”
“It’s not about me. I couldn’t have done any of the work on my own.”