Thomas S. Johnson

Family Member

Retired Chairman and CEO, GreenPoint Financial Corporation

Thomas S. Johnson is a retired banking executive. His banking career started in 1969 at Chemical Bank, New York, where he served in staff positions including chief financial officer and senior management roles including EVP in charge of Capital Markets, and then President. In 1989, Johnson moved to Manufacturers Hanover, where he served as president for two years.

From 1993 until 2004, Johnson served as chairman and CEO of GreenPoint Financial Corp. and GreenPoint Bank. He retired from banking when GreenPoint was sold to North Fork Bank in 2004.

In addition to the boards of his banking positions, Johnson served on a number of other corporate boards, including Prudential Life, R.R. Donnelly and Sons, Inc, Alleghany Corporation, Phoenix Life (non-executive chair) Online Resources, and Freddie Mac (lead director). He currently serves on the boards of Santander Holdings USA (lead director) and Santander Bank USA.

Throughout his adult life, Johnson has been active in not-for-profit activities. They currently include the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, the Institute of International Education (Chair), and the Norton Museum of Art. He formerly served on the boards of Union Theological Seminary (chair), Inner City Scholarship Fund, Trinity College (chair), United States-Japan Foundation (chair), United Way of New York City, WNET/Channel 13, Asia Society (Treasurer), Religion in America (chair), and The Cancer Research Institute of America. Johnson and his wife, Margaret Ann, serve on the board of their foundation, The Johnson Family Foundation, which has made numerous grants to educational, religious, and cultural organizations. The Johnson family has endowed two distinguished professorships at Trinity College as well as endowing the support of visiting rescued scholars at Trinity and Connecticut College in partnership with the Scholar Rescue Fund of the Institute of International Education.

Johnson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former member of the Group of Thirty.

He received his A.B. in economics from Trinity College in 1962 and his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1964. Following graduate school, Johnson assisted in the founding of the master’s in business management program at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines from 1964 to 1966. From 1966 to 1969 he served as special assistant to the comptroller, U.S. Department of Defense. He and his wife were married in 1970 and have a daughter, Margaret Wager, and five grandchildren. Their son Tom deceased in 2015 and their son Scott deceased in the World Trade Center attacks September 11, 2001.