Akron Urban League

John M. Williams is best described as a Servant Leader who uses education and advocacy to ameliorate social inequity. He graduated from Morehouse College, earning a B.A. in Business Administration with a concentration in Banking and Finance. His corporate career includes serving as President and CEO of the Akron Urban League, Habitat for Humanity of Michigan, Interim Executive Director with Summit Education Initiative, Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer with Alpha Phi Alpha Homes, Ford Motor Company, and 20 years with Nissan North America. During his time at Nissan, he created Nissan North America’s Minority Dealer Development Initiative, which significantly increased minority dealer representation. 

John is a highly regarded local, regional, and national community leader with a wealth of experience in board development, parliamentary procedure and protocol, organizational development, and strategic planning and system change. His expertise extends to organizational transformation, fiscal management, and plan implementation. He has a proven track record in preparing organization governance documents and is well-versed in corporate and Christian leadership, education, and ecumenical organizational structures. Though John's leadership roles include serving on boards, you can often find him serving the youth of our community, reading to kindergartners, registering voters, and training teenagers to become community leaders. 

John is an Executive Producer of the Emmy Award-winning documentary An Answer From Akron, a PBS documentary on the history of Alpha Phi Alpha Homes, Inc. John has served on many boards including Board Chair, Fair Lending Services, Board Member, Affiliate Mortgage Services; Former President, Akron Summit Community Redevelopment Coalition; Former Board Chair, Akron-Canton Airport Board; graduate and Former Board Secretary of Leadership Akron and Former Chair of the Steering Committee for Diversity on Board;  Former Board Chair, County of Summit Alcohol, Drug Addiction & Mental Health (ADM) Board; Former President, Akron Roundtable; Former Board Vice-Chair, Summit Education Initiative (SEI); Secretary, Western Reserve Community Fund;  and former board member of Ronald McDonald House of Northeast Ohio.