Sean Isamu Johnson

Sean Isamu Johnson is a civic designer, researcher, and plain language lead at the Center for Civic Design since August 2020, focusing on creating user-friendly election materials and collaborating with elections offices across various levels of government. Previously, Sean served as a linguistic and plain language consultant for the Office for Justice Initiatives, developing evidence-based guidelines for website design and legal documents. Sean’s experience also includes roles as a linguistic annotator at the Information Sciences Institute and a linguistic analyst for the Forensic Linguistics Capital Case Innocence Project, where linguistic evidence was evaluated in wrongful conviction cases. Additionally, Sean has worked as a freelance linguistic consultant, service department manager at Harris Cyclery, intake assistant for the New England Innocence Project, and tutor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and UC Santa Cruz. Sean holds a master's degree in forensic linguistics from Hofstra University and a degree in linguistics from UC Santa Cruz.