Our story begins with a question:
What if girls and women had spaces to express themselves creatively, nurture their well-being, and strategize for growth and leadership?
Epitome Company Global was created to answer that question - for the young leader who may not know where to start, or was made to feel like they were not enough. For the girl once called “too much”, or the woman carrying the pressure of outside expectations.
We deliver leadership education grounded in the creative arts, social justice, and wellness as a pathway to social change. Through creative writing, coaching, and consulting, we equip girls and women to reclaim their narratives, affirm their worth, and lead initiatives with clarity and impact—skills essential for navigating and transforming today’s leadership spaces.
Your lived experience is knowledge. Your voice is an essential tool. You are the Epitome of beauty, power, and what our world needs.
The Epitome Beauty Fund
Alongside growth through creative expression, we support the reclamation of beauty as a site of power, healing, and visibility.
Meet our Founder
Grace Johnson
Grace Johnson is a leadership educator, media scholar, and program strategist who believes in the transformative power of storytelling. Her creative journey began in the library of her hometown, Oak Park, Illinois, where she discovered that words could offer both refuge and resistance. What started as writing stories for her family soon became a way to process racial and gender-based violence and speak back to the world. In high school, she found her voice in a spoken word club, leveraging poetry not only in competitions across Chicago for the world’s largest youth poetry festival, but also as a platform to reclaim her identity and imagine new futures.
With a decade of experience in leadership education, Grace founded Epitome Company Global to create the same reflective, empowering spaces that the arts gave her. She draws on her expertise as a changemaker, media critic, and feminist thinker to help communities amplify their voices, build cultural competency, and design initiatives rooted in justice and care.
Beyond her company, Grace co-leads an international leadership program for emerging leaders, where she supports the selection and development of values-driven fellows across the United States and beyond. She has been competitively awarded fellowships from the Roger and Chaz Ebert Foundation, Northwestern University’s Wirtz Center for the Performing and Media Arts, and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., where she also serves on the Midwestern leadership team. Grace holds an M.S. in Leadership for Creative Enterprises from Northwestern University and a B.S. in Media and Cinema Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, along with certifications in Global Community Organizing, Black Women and Gender Studies, and tutoring and mentoring. She brings an interdisciplinary, justice-driven lens to every room she enters — and invites others to do the same.
