Why She’s Interesting: After pivoting to entrepreneurship in her 40s and purchasing her Visiting Angels franchise — an in-home service provider assisting older adults — Constance Hill-Johnson has focused on giving back to the community through involvement with various boards, including serving as the first Black woman to chair the board of directors for The Cleveland Foundation as it settles into its new headquarters in Midtown.
Many Hats: A Glenville native, Hill-Johnson’s winding path has included making trades on a brokerage desk for Merrill Lynch in Detroit, being a motivational coach and public speaker, and working in a St. Louis hospital, where she was laid off in 2001 due to downsizing. Then, she read an article in Black Enterprise magazine about minorities buying franchises. “I went on a website where I filled out a profile and it popped out a list of franchises that fit my abilities and interests, and it said Visiting Angels,” Hill-Johnson says. “We’re now in our 21st year.”
Mom’s Basement: Hill-Johnson returned to Cleveland and moved in with her mother, setting up an office in the basement next to old Easy-Bake Ovens and Barbie dolls. “But I couldn’t have people interviewing at home, so I went to a Borders bookstore at Severance [Town Center] and asked the cafe managers if I could set up a table there to interview people once a week, and I did that for two years until I moved into the offices where I am now.”
Meeting MJ: In the mid 1970s, Hill-Johnson was the president of the local chapter of The Jackson 5 Fan Club, and got to meet the group when they performed at the Front Row Theater concert-in-the-round venue. “We all had jackets and my aunt stitched black velvet hearts on the back, and we had a luncheon and I met Joe Jackson and all of the kids. At the time, we took Polaroids,” she says. “They’ve gotta be in a box somewhere.”
Happy Birthday?: Hill-Johnson’s birthday is Sept. 11, and she was actually in the air that infamous day in 2001. “I was headed on an American Airlines flight from St. Louis to Newark, and it was the first time in my life I ever experienced a plane literally doing a U-turn, and the pilot said we were going back to St. Louis.”
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