Lynn Johnson Langer: Growing Leaders for the Greater Good

Published September 10, 2025

On the Chesapeake Bay is where Lynn Johnson Langer has found peace for more than 10 years. Aboard her boat with her family, including her husband, three children, and three grandchildren, Langer sails for both a sense of adventure and for sheer solace.

“It’s glorious when you get out there, and there is the right wind,” Langer said. “Truly, it is just like the lyrics of the Christopher Cross song, ‘You can sail away and find tranquility’,” said Langer, who after three decades at Hopkins continues to provide the wind in the sails of her Johns Hopkins students’ success.

Since her arrival at JHU as an adjunct in 1995 to her full-time impact beginning in 2001, Langer has been on a course to influence the greater good. She held roles that created and guided new graduate programs. She also previously served as the Acting Associate Dean of the JHU Advanced Academic Programs division, as the immediate successor to current Associate Dean Veronica Donahue.

Though now retired from full-time work, she continues as an adjunct lecturer in the MS in Organizational Leadership program where she cites charting student growth as some of her life’s most fulfilling work.

Langer’s professional path started in the biotech industry after she earned a degree in microbiology at the University of Maryland and took a job in a research lab at the National Institute of Health. After four years at NIH, she began pursuit of an MBA at Hopkins.

“Most people who go into biotechnology want to ‘cure cancer,’ that is, they want to do something for humanity, for the greater good,” she said. “I wanted to help get the science out of the lab and make it available to the patient. So, I needed the business courses to understand that part of the equation, because it is a long process. I began my version of ‘curing cancer’ by helping scientists figure out how to do just that. I worked first in a small biotech company in marketing and sales and moved to a bigger company where the NIH was my account. Teaching and administering biotech really spoke to me, but I didn’t have a PhD, so I decided to enroll in Antioch University’s leadership and organizational development program, which at the time was very new and entrepreneurial. Along the way, I realized that working in the lab wasn’t for me and doing marketing wasn’t for me, but that education and teaching was and is, in fact, doing the greater good. And now I am ‘curing cancer’ by helping people become better leaders.

“Most of the students who come into JHU’s Organizational Leadership program blow me away,” Langer continued. “They come from diverse backgrounds – everything from young, idealistic, and fresh out of undergraduate programs to military folks trained in special forces who have just come back from combat. Their experience of leading people can be life or death. I really enjoy being a part of this leadership program because it is bigger than biotech, but I can still bring my biotech experience into the program in a meaningful way.”

In her course, “Leadership: A Developmental Process,” Langer comes full circle and draws from her varied background and the influences of her own personal leaders – former JHU biotech program director Victor Corces, “one of those rare people who is brilliant in science and in humanity,” and her dissertation chair, and one of the early founders of the Peace Corps, Al Guskin, who was “an inspirational leader who helped me think through some of the best writing I ever did.” Perhaps, most importantly, Langer also singles out mentor Susan Kellogg, who taught Women in Management at Johns Hopkins. Kellogg, a former Insurance Commissioner from the State of Maryland, “taught me how important adapting to the situation and audience is in becoming a successful, woman leader.”

“Having been in far too many high-level meetings where the only other female at the table was the admin taking notes, I am happy to see that this has improved,” said Langer who worked to launch the Hopkins Professional Women’s Network and who was instrumental in moving Women in Bio, as the organization’s president, from a regional group to a national level. “I learned a long time ago, through research, that Boards of Directors make better decisions, and ultimately reap higher returns on investment, when there is diversity, and not just all white men, on their boards. It makes good business sense. It’s been wonderful to see change, but there is still a long way to go.”

Langer now fosters an environment, through her personal style of “facilitative leadership,” that allows students to grasp the theories and concepts of leadership and adopt the leadership style that best aligns with their own core values.

“I really like getting the people in my classroom to talk, collaborate, and create new ideas,” she said. “I am perfectly comfortable making hard decisions, because that is what leaders have to do, and hard decisions have to be made, but I really like to have everyone involved. You get ownership that way, and people are then willing to get on board and go through struggles to solve problems.

“When I first arrived at Hopkins, I realized, ‘Oh, these are my people,” Langer continued. “Hopkins is where my heart is. My father got his PhD here. My husband taught here. My daughter earned her master’s degree here. I have been here for more than three decades. I am truly proud and happy to still be teaching at Hopkins in the Organizational Leadership program. To have a student come back and say, ‘Your class changed my life and now I am ‘curing cancer’ or ‘Now I am more broadly in leadership’ has opened my eyes and touched my heart. While I have taught in different places, there is something about the quality of the students who are attracted to come to Hopkins, across the board, and particularly in the organizational leadership program. They come in with a strong skillset because they are interested in leadership, and they are the ones who absolutely will be changing the world. I would not hesitate to tell anyone, ‘If you are interested in leadership, come and learn with our expert faculty and alongside some of the world’s soon-to-be great leaders’.”