Tod Johnson (TPR 1966, 1967)
2019 Founders Medal for Outstanding Achievement
1990 Alumni Service Award
Bio
Tod Johnson (TPR 1966, 1967) is the executive chairman of The NPD Group. Since 1971, he has grown the company from a small U.S. market research provider to a leader in marketing information and advisory services, serving more than 20 industries, with operations spanning the Americas, Europe and APAC. With innovative leadership, he has seized on emerging trends, new technologies and the power of big data long before others saw the opportunity, pioneering point-of-sales tracking and receipt harvesting.An expert in his field for more than 40 years, Tod is a frequent speaker at marketing research and management conferences and has been widely published in research publications in the areas of brand loyalty and equity.
He has been a chairman, vice chairman, secretary and director of the Advertising Research Foundation. Tod was a founding chairman and director of the Council for Marketing and Opinion Research. He was elected to the Market Research Council Hall of Fame in 2011.
Vice chair of the Carnegie Mellon University Board of Trustees, Tod also chaired CMU’s Centennial Campaign. Tod has applied his enthusiastic, focused and thoughtful leadership across Carnegie Mellon, including acting as a Tepper class agent, serving on the Andrew Carnegie Society Board, chairing the recent presidential search committee, serving on numerous advisory boards at the department and college level, working on his reunion committee and many more. By proving good counsel and mentoring to faculty, administrators, staff and students and generously giving to support the university’s priorities, he has quietly and surely helped to make the university and its people a force for good in the world.
He is a managing director of the Metropolitan Opera and a director of CivicScience, a new survey technology startup. He was CEO and founder of Media Metrix from 1995 to 2001 and is a past member of the JPMorgan Chase Regional Advisory Board.
