Princess Johnson | Long Story Short with Leslie Wilcox

Princess Johnson, whom our team welcomed at PBS Hawaiʻi for this conversation, is Creative Producer of the PBS KIDS series Molly of Denali, which follows the adventures of 10-year-old Alaska Native Molly Mabray and her friends. Johnson, of Fairbanks, Alaska, had no idea that she was preparing for a perfect opportunity when she earned a master’s degree in education while pursuing a passion for the performing arts and staying rooted to culture, with her maternal ancestry from the Neets’aii Gwich’in tribe. This combination of training, skills and culture equipped her to produce a curriculum-based Alaska series. “This is something really awesome, a life lesson: to trust where you’re at,” she says. “You do have to be ready when the opportunity comes.”