RA Board Names Travis Johnson To Fill Open At-Large Seat

RESTON, VA — Reston Association's Board of Directors chose Travis Johnson to fill the open at-large seat at its monthly meeting on Thursday nigh. The seat was vacated at the end of November by Glenn Small.

Prior to making their decision, board members listened to brief statements by Johnson and fellow candidates Trevor Grywatch and Jeff Spurrier.

Johnson and his family originally moved to Reston in 2006 but had to move away in 2010. When they returned to the DMV area for Johnson's job, they came back to Reston.

"I love it here. We love it here," Johnson said, in his statement. "My goal is to help Reston remain a fantastic place to raise my family."

One of Johnson's daughters is a senior in high school and the other is a sixth-grader at Sunrise Valley Elementary School.

"My goal is to make Reston a place where my older one wants to come back and my younger one has a great time while she's here and then eventually wants to come back."

An advisory manager at Deloitte, Johnson said his professional experience in process improvement would be an asset to the RA Board.

"I subscribe to the old adage of not throwing out the baby with the bathwater," he said. "I'd like to identify processes that work. Use those as examples and templates for modifying the existing ones that currently don't work."

Related: 2 RA Board Candidates Withdraw From At-Large Seat Race

The board then entered executive session to discuss the three candidates and other matters. When they came out of executive session about 42 minutes later, they announced that Johnson was their choice.

This was not the first time Johnson has run for a position on the RA Board. Five years ago he put himself forward as a candidate, but he was not chosen. He told the board on Thursday night that he'd learned a lot from that experience.

"I had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people around Reston and there are whole communities who just don't feel like they're part of Reston. Like when we talk about Restonians, we're talking about them," he said. "It's been five years but I've gotten to know a lot more people in that time and that particular opinion hasn't changed. I'd like to turn help turn that around."