Johnston is the president and founder of Page One PR. He started his career in software before entering journalism. He reported for the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle and later served as assistant dean at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. In Australia, he led marketing and operations for HP’s largest systems integrator. In the U.S., he held executive marketing positions at public and private software companies in Silicon Valley. Johnston has written for many publications, including California Magazine, Computer Praxis, Der Spiegel, London Today and Stanford Lawyer. He holds a BA in English from Stanford University and a master’s in journalism from UC Berkeley.