Dr. Johns assumed the post of Chancellor for Emory University on October 1, 2007. Prior to that, starting in 1996, he served as Executive Vice President for Health Affairs; CEO, The Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center; Chairman of the Board, Emory Healthcare; Co-Chairman of the Board, EHCA, LLC; and Professor, Department of Otolaryngology, Emory University School of Medicine. As leader of the Health Sciences Center and Emory Healthcare for 11 years, Dr. Johns engineered the transformation of the Health Sciences Center into one of the nation's preeminent centers in education, research, and patient care. Highlights include major growth and reshaping of the research enterprise, development of enhanced curricula for each of the health professions schools (Medicine, Nursing, and Public Heath), recruitment and retention of world-class faculty, formation of Emory Healthcare through consolidation and realignment of Emory's extensive clinical enterprise, and the most extensive facilities improvement plan in Emory history, including new buildings and facilities for biomedical research, new homes for both the schools of Nursing and Medicine, a new vaccine center, a new cancer institute, a new pediatrics center, and reconfiguration and rebuilding of the Emory Crawford Long Hospital campus in midtown Atlanta.

From 1990 to 1996, Dr. Johns was Dean of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Vice President of the Medical Faculty, after having served, beginning in 1984, as Professor and Chair of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and as Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs.

Dr. Johns was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 1993. He has served as a member of the IOM Council, as Vice Chair of the Council of the IOM, and on many IOM committees. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, past Chairman of the Council of Teaching Hospitals of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), and Chairman of the AAMC's Board of Advisers of the Institute for the Improvement of Medical Education. He is a past member of the Governing Board of the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council and the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Governing Board of the Clinical Center and Council of the National Center for Research Resources. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors and as President of the American Board of Otolaryngology, as Chair of the Board of the Association of Academic Health Centers, and as Chair of the Council of Deans of the AAMC. He was Editor of the Archives of Otolaryngology from 1992 to 2005, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of the American Medical Association. He chairs the Journal Oversight Committee of the journal Academic Medicine.

Dr. Johns also serves on a variety of private-sector and philanthropic boards, including Johnson & Johnson, the Genuine Parts Company, and the Georgia Cancer Coalition. He is a past member of the Board of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland, Williams and Wilkins Company, I-Trax, Inc., and the Georgia Tech Research Center Inc. He co-chaired the Task Force on Biotechnology Development of the Atlanta Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.

Dr. Johns received his bachelor's degree from Wayne State University and his medical degree from the University of Michigan Medical School. As a cancer surgeon of head and neck tumors, he was internationally recognized for his clinical care and his studies of treatment outcomes.