This site is a way to report on and direct users to the many projects of Jone Johnson Lewis. Jone has a long history of leadership, management, training, organizational development, coaching, and writing. She’s served as a wedding officiant and presider at memorial services for more than 30 years, and practices as a transformational coach and organizational consultant, in private practice.
She has led progressive religious communities as a professional since 1991, when she was ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister and certified as an Ethical Culture Leader. She served (from most recent to earliest): the Riverdale-Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture, the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, the Northern Virginia Ethical Society, the Church of the Larger Fellowship (as cyberministers), the Chicago Ethical Humanist Society, and the Berrien Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship. Jone’s work with the American Ethical Union, the federation of Ethical Societies, has included serving on a variety of committees, as Interim Executive Director, and on the Board. Jone’s work with the Unitarian Universalist Association included a number of years serving on the web staff, summarizing events for the UUA.org website.
Jone was, for 19 years, the expert behind Thoughtco.com’s Women’s History site (formerly About.com), although she is no longer producing content for that site and cannot make any corrections or authorize any reuse of that content.
For more than 25 years Jone has maintained a quotations website: Wisdom Quotes (recently significantly reorganized), where she aims to put quality above quantity in selecting quotations to inspire and challenge.
Jone writes online about community and humanism and other topics. She also studies and writes about genealogy.
Jone is a third generation humanist, raised in the Midwest. She studied business, math and history, was a computer programmer and systems analyst, and managed information technology education departments for several Fortune 500 companies, before turning to congregational leadership as a profession.
Jone is a graduate of Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago (M. Div.) and of the Humanist Institute. She has served as an adjunct faculty member at Meadville and as a faculty member of the Humanist Institute. She did undergraduate work at the University of Chicago, and has a B.A. from the Women in Management program at Mundelein College, the last private Catholic women’s college in Illinois, founded by a justice-oriented women’s religious order.
Jone’s many interests also include social justice, communication skills, science, religion, history and philosophy. She actively studies Compassionate Communication (also known as Nonviolent Communication) and meditation.
Jone is married to Bill Lewis, a retired transportation planner and electrician. Jone has two adult sons and Bill has three adult children; Jone and Bill enjoy keeping up with the lives of their children and grandchildren.