
MEET REGINA
Hey friend! I'm Regina Johnson.
In the fall of 2016, Regina Johnson returned to her alma mater, Monmouth College, to take the role of Director of Multicultural Student Services. This change came after a decade in the corporate business/healthcare field. Having started her career in education she returned excited about the opportunity to assist underrepresented students grow in the necessary skills needed to navigate ever changing professional spaces.
Over the last five years, Regina has diligently provided campus support to students, staff and faculty, in promoting inclusive spaces and fostering healthy dialogue across differences. In addition, she supports campus cultural programming and education, is the campus coordinator for a grant funded first generation student peer mentoring program, is the NCAA Athletic Diversity Inclusion Designee, and serves as a co-chair of the campus Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion working group; a working group responsible for creating the campuses first diversity strategic plan.
In alignment with the cultural competency curriculum that is part of the strategic plan, she became a licensed facilitator of Intercultural Development Inventory. The Intercultural Development Inventory® (IDI®) is the premier cross-culturally valid assessment for building cultural competence in your school or organization.
Regina attributes her passion for equity and inclusion work to two critical factors: her grandma and her own identity development. She was raised by her grandmother, who immigrated to the United States in 1955, and watching her struggle with her own “intersected” identities motivated Regina to study history, politics, and education in college. And the journey as a first generation, multi-racial woman herself, Regina has fostered a passion for not only equity and inclusion work, but they have become a driving force in her goal of helping multi-racial women/women unpack their own identity development.
Want to experience the expertise of Champion for Five for yourself?
Reach out to Regina or make the call!
It's like chatting with an old friend.

CHAMPION FOR FIVE?
The story behind the name.
In hindsight, equity and inclusion work has always been my path, beginning with my own name. Regina (pronounced Reh-gee-Nah) set me apart from the crowd from my very beginning. It was a name passed on to me by my German grandmother who raised me. Growing up I heard stories that made me both curious and inquisitive about the world around me. As a multi-racial woman, it was these early stories and my desire to have a complete understanding of where I came from, that drove me to go on and study history, politics, and education in college. Little did I know, during my home stretch of undergrad, I would begin to unpack a story of a man named Champion Miller.
Champion Miller, born a slave, came to Monmouth, Illinois, after purchasing his freedom in Barren County Kentucky, in search of his brother. His brother, Richard Murphy, had come to the West Central area with his master. Champion created a life in Monmouth that many at that time could only dream of. He not only learned to read and write with the help of a local family (who was interwoven into the Monmouth College community) but he became so respected, that people within the community helped him raise enough money to go back to purchase his wife and son out of slavery. He returned to Monmouth with his wife and son, and became one of the founding members of the 4th Presbyterian Church, which was the first African American Church in Monmouth.
Twenty years later, during the summer of 2020, Champion Miller’s story came back to me as the world was forever changing. It changed me all those years ago. To be able to tell the story about his impact, during a time that did not fully even see him as a whole man, was monumental for me. As a woman that was raised torn between intersecting identities, I came into my own through my research of him. Telling his story shaped both how I saw and embraced the world around me.
Like Champion, my family of five, is my life. I’d move mountains to keep them together. I would fight to protect and watch them grow; even when the world around may not always accept them.
I will always champion for my five.