ABOUT HAL

I grew up on a grape farm in western New York, where my parents still live. In addition to running the farm, my father was a heavy equipment operator until his retirement. He continued to run the farm until he was 80 years old. My mother was a stay at home mom to five children (I’m the oldest), and has continued to be very active in helping to raise her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I attended Cardinal Mindszenty High School in Dunkirk, NY, graduating in 1976. I then attended St. John Fisher College in Rochester, NY for two years before realizing that I wasn’t yet ready to be serious about school. I took a couple of years off before going back to school at Montana State University. After graduating in December 1982 I began graduate school at Florida State University in the Psychobiology Program (now called Neuroscience) in fall 1983.

I soon realized that funding for pure science (i.e. figuring out how the brain controls behavior) had dried up, and that I was facing an uncertain professional future. So I went to work at the old Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS) in 1985 managing the Indigent Drug Program for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Program Office – providing psychotropic drugs to clients in community mental health centers around the state. I then moved to the Office of Child Support Enforcement, also located in HRS at that time. In the late 1980s I accepted an offer to move to the private sector as Operations Manager of an analytical laboratory, later moving to Marketing Director. When the laboratory moved out of state, I began to sell real estate and started my own business.

From 1987 through about 1998 I was very active in the Tallahassee, Capital City, and Florida Jaycees. I held several local and statewide offices, and won numerous awards from the Florida and United States Jaycees.

In 2001 I accepted an offer to return to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Program Office, now at the Department of Children and Families (DCF). I coordinated the Florida Youth Substance Abuse Survey (FYSAS) from 2001 through 2013. In 2007 I earned my Master of Public Health (MPH) degree, and became managing epidemiologist, expanding my data analyses beyond the FYSAS to include hospitalization data, medical examiner data, and other miscellaneous data sources.

From 2010 to 2013, changes in management at DCF severely limited the ability of the Substance Abuse Prevention Program to function effectively. As a result, I resigned in October 2013 and began my own behavioral epidemiology consulting business, which I continue to operate today.

My growing frustration with extreme partisan politics in this state and country motivated me to run for Governor. While a write-in candidate is not likely to win competing against the financial resources of the major parties, this is my opportunity to make a statement that executive offices should be about LEADERSHIP, and not about extreme politics. I hope you’ll join me in making that statement by writing in Hal Johnson for Governor in 2018.