Lucille Chiplin Johnson, MBA, MPA is the former Assistant to the Executive Director, Manager of Economic Development and Public Affairs, North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG)
Lucille recently retired from NCTCOG, a regional planning agency that assists counties, cities, school districts and special districts in planning for a broad array of services and funding in the areas of aging services, economic development, emergency management and recovery, workforce development, environment development, local government training, city and regional planning, and regional transportation. The agency serves an area that includes over 7.5 million people in 16 counties anchored by Dallas and Fort Worth. She worked for NCTCOG for more than 30 years.
Lucille was the director of the region’s Economic Development District, managing and directing the Comprehensive Economic Development Strategies (CEDS), an economic guideline of regional investment priorities, goals and objectives to ensure growth, create and maintain jobs, adapt to global economic conditions, and have resiliency plans in place to recover from economic loss and disasters. She worked with cities, communities, counties and non-profit groups to secure funding for economically distressed areas to create and maintain jobs.
Lucille was also NCTCOG’s staff liaison to the Governor’s Office for the Texas Regional Grant Review and Comment System, as part of the federal A-95 State Single Point of Contact (SPOC). She reviewed, commented on, and recommended federal grant applications for projects in North Texas. She was also the agency’s liaison to the Governor’s office for preparing and reporting NCTCOG’s annual projected and actual goals reports. Additionally, she managed NCTCOG’s Public Affairs Department, speaking to university and college classes, community leadership groups, public and private sector organizations, leadership classes, elected officials and foreign officials and visitors, as well as with the press. She also wrote a monthly employee newsletter and was the editor of a monthly regional newsletter.
Lucille worked with the colleges and universities in North Texas, and for 15 years was an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, teaching a required internship class for masters’ students in Public Administration, Urban Affairs, and City Planning at her NCTCOG office.
Lucille received her BS and MBA from Mississippi State University and a Master of Public Administration from the University of Texas at Arlington.
Lucille lives with Multiple Sclerosis, has been a devoted family caregiver, and is long familiar with the Center’s work and culture. She spoke at the Center’s 2019 Summit about the shameful period in US history in which access to health care was tied to race, and great disparities in quality of care were rampant. She spoke from personal experience of African Americans dying from inadequate care while waiting to get medical care. African American doctors were foreclosed from admitting privileges at most hospitals and hundreds of hospitals would only care for white people. Johnson spoke of the segregated hospital in Mississippi featured in the Power to Heal film. She presented a brick from that hospital, after it was removed, from Mayor George Flaggs on behalf of the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, to the Center for Medicare Advocacy, as a symbol of the power of government and Medicare to desegregate hospitals. Lucille is also the sister of Alfred J. Chiplin Jr., for whom the Center for Medicare Advocacy established the Alfred J. Chiplin, Jr., Social Justice & Advocacy Award in 2017.