TyLisa C. Johnson | Journalist, author

TyLisa C. Johnson is an award-winning journalist, speaker, poet and the audience engagement producer at the Poynter Institute. 

For nearly a decade, she has navigated the worlds of editorial, audience and product.  While reporting, she wrote about social and cultural subjects including hunger, travel, housing insecurity, libraries and pandemic education at publications including The Philadelphia Inquirer, Carnegie Magazine, The Dallas Morning News, The Points Guy, PublicSource, The News Journal/Delaware Online and the Tampa Bay Times. She has also spoken on an array of panels, podcasts and radio shows, including WESA 90.5, WHYY, CityCast Pittsburgh and more. In early 2020, she spoke on an American Libraries Association panel about reporting on library systems. In Pittsburgh, she co-facilitated weekly poetry workshops for teens as part of Write Pittsburgh. She is a proud graduate of Florida A&M University’s school of journalism, where she graduated summa cum laude, and Wilmington Friends School, where she was named 2025 Young Alumna of the Year.

As the audience engagement producer at Poynter, she is a social media strategist, content creator and social media manager shaping how Poynter’s journalism, products and brands connects with digital audiences. She writes, produces viral video and series, creates journalism memes, writes for the Poynter newsroom, and more. On platforms including Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, BlueSky and TikTok, she has grown audiences, fostered a hyper-engaged community and reoriented content to be service-oriented and service-driven. She strategizes around social media content, shapes internal processes, analyzes data and creates content to drive increased online reach and engagement. Most notably, her meme strategy has increased meme reach over 440%. The memes reached 1.7M in 2025, and brought in over 2.7 million views.

Prior to Poynter, she was the first audience engagement editor at PublicSource, an investigative nonprofit newsroom based in Pittsburgh, PA. She accepted the role following more than a year as a K-12 enterprise reporter, reporting about Pittsburgh’s school district, students’ need insecurities, how COVID changed Pittsburgh’s educational experience and the continued criminalization of students at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

At The Philadelphia Inquirer, her persistent coverage of The Free Library of Philadelphia and the ongoing “Fund Our Libraries” grassroots movement contributed to local legislative action, including a funding increase for the library system and an accountability plan for its leader. After leaving the Inquirer, she created Voices of Now to continue her coverage of library workers, namely the Concerned Black Workers movement and subsequent library event cancellations by notable authors.

As a student at Florida A&M University, TyLisa was a beat reporter at The Famuan focused on the University’s president and board of Trustees. She was editor-in-chief twice of her college magazine Journey Magazine, which won multiple awards during her tenure. Following her graduation from FAMU, TyLisa was a reporting fellow with the 2017 New York Times Student Journalism Institute. She later joined the inaugural class of the Lenfest Fellowship at the Inquirer. 

In her free time, she loves publishing essays and poetry on her Substack, finding new restaurants, ranting about the importance of libraries (and visiting them) and visiting new museums.

Award & Panel Highlights:

• 2025, Wilmington Friends School Young Alumna of the Year
• 2025, Creators in Journalism panel host
• 2025, MediaWise Moments of Truth panelist
• 2025, The Journey After panelist
• 2022 Pittsburgh Black Media Federation
• 2022 Golden Quill Award, Excellence in Written Journalism
• 2021 Golden Quill Award, Excellence in Written Journalism
• 2020, American Libraries Association, panelist
• 2019, Philadelphia Inquirer, Made in Philly panelist
• 2018, Florida A&M University SJGC, panelist
• 2016, Florida A&M University SJGC, First Amendment Discussion panelist