Brennan Nevada Johnson, 33, is the founder & CEO of Brennan Nevada Inc., the only New York-based Black, female-owned public relations and media agency exclusively for tech companies, startups, and venture capitalists.
Her client list includes Black-owned companies like SoLo Funds, RenderATL, Zane Venture Fund, Myosin Marketing, Reframe, MACH9, Hero Collective, Hero Media, GoodFeed, and JumpCrew. She is also the host of Bald & Buzzed with Brennan, a weekly show exclusively for people without hair who have not typically been embraced or celebrated in certain spaces. Johnson has been bald by choice for over 13 years.
Johnson is originally from Providence, Rhode Island. She and her sister were adopted as young children by their mother. The family converted to Judaism when she was about four years of age. She attended Hebrew schools throughout her educational career and was bat mitzvahed at Temple Emanu-El in Providence. Her family was the first ever Black family to become a member of the temple, she said. Because of her religious background she’s a huge believer in diversity and inclusion as well as building coalitions between religious and cultural communities.
Throughout high school, Johnson was a dedicated athlete who played competitive volleyball but always had dreams of moving to New York City. “I like Providence, but if I’m being honest Providence is very small, and I had big ole dreams,” said Johnson. “I just always wanted to live in Manhattan.”
In college, she transferred to St. John’s University in Queens. She studied journalism, envisioning herself as the next Wendy Williams or big media personality, she said. However, after struggling to find footing in journalism, she eventually landed a job in tech PR in 2013. “It was crazy. I had internships. I had published articles, a column, the newspaper and I couldn’t get a job in journalism,” said Johnson, who briefly interned for the Amsterdam News as well. “But everything happens for a reason.”
While immersed in the tech and public relations industry for the next decade, Johnson found that many agencies and preferred clients lacked diversity. She wanted to find a way to get resources to more Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) and women-led tech companies and startups. Coincidentally, the pandemic in 2020 allowed her the perfect opportunity to venture into entrepreneurship herself and start a new chapter. She founded her PR company in 2021.
“Now is the time to bet on myself,” said Johnson. “And that was when Brennan Nevada Inc. was officially birthed.”
Johnson has been recognized for her storytelling talents and is published in news outlets like Bustle, NBC News, The Daily Beast, Essence Magazine, InStyle, Teen Vogue, Newsweek, Fast Company, AdWeek, and a monthly column with Built In. She reveled in being an entrepreneur and feels like it’s been a dream come true for the last few years.
Johnson now lives in Harlem and has based her company there. As a distant relative of Carter G. Woodson, the founder of Black History Month, on her maternal grandmother’s side, Johnson feels that Harlem is the epicenter of Black excellence and wants to continue contributing to the community as much as she can.