Suzanne Nora Johnson

Nora Johnson holds a BA from the University of Southern California and a JD from Harvard Law School. Before joining Goldman Sachs she was an attorney at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and a law clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals.⁠[1][2]

She has been a USC trustee since 1998 and chair of the board since 2022. In June 2024, as chair, she welcomed Mark A. StevensMark A. StevensMark A. Stevens is an American venture capitalist who was a managing partner of Sequoia Capital from 1993 to 2011 and founded the family office S-Cubed Capital in 2012. A University of Southern California alumnus and trustee, he served on the NVIDIA board from 1993 to 2006 and again since 2008.Open the full entry back for a second term as a voting trustee.⁠[1][3]

She spent 21 years at Goldman Sachs in a range of leadership roles, including chair of the Global Markets Institute, head of global research, head of global health care and member of the management committee, retiring as vice chairman.⁠[1][2]

She joined the Intuit board in 2007 and later became its chair; she served on the boards of Visa from 2007 to 2022 and American International Group from 2008 to 2020. NVIDIA’s biography gives her IntuitIntuitIntuit is an American financial software company founded in 1983 by Scott Cook and Tom Proulx. It began with the personal finance program Quicken and now offers TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks and Mailchimp, among other products. It is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and trades on Nasdaq as INTU. NVIDIA director Suzanne Nora Johnson was long a director and chair of its board.Open the full entry tenure as 2007 to 2025 and Brookings’ profile as 2007 to 2026; NVIDIA’s May 2026 announcement said she had recently stepped down as Intuit’s chair.⁠[1][2][4]

She has been a Brookings Institution trustee since 2011 and co-chair since 2018. She also chairs the Markle Foundation and serves on the boards of the Broad Foundation, The Broad museum and Wellcome Leap, and previously served as a trustee and co-chair of the Carnegie Institution for Science.⁠[1][2]

She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (chairing its investment committee), the Council on Foreign RelationsCouncil on Foreign RelationsThe Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is a nonpartisan, independent U.S. membership organization and think tank founded in 1921 and based in New York, which has published Foreign Affairs since 1922 and takes no institutional positions on policy; Michael Froman has been its 15th president since 2023.Open the full entry and the Foreign Policy Association, has chaired and served on World Economic Forum Global Agenda Councils, and was a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute.⁠[2]

On May 7, 2026, the NVIDIA board appointed Nora Johnson as a director and member of the audit committee, increasing the board from ten to eleven members effective July 13; the Form 8-K noted that she would join on that date because of a prior professional commitment. NVIDIA’s May 8 announcement gave her age as 68, and Jensen HuangJensen HuangJensen Huang is a co-founder of NVIDIA who served as its president, chief executive officer, and a director from the company’s founding in 1993 until he resigned from those positions in November 2026. He has a background in electrical engineering education and the semiconductor industry, and under his leadership NVIDIA’s business expanded from graphics chips to GPU general-purpose computing, artificial intelligence, and data center computing platforms.Open the full entry said her career spanned finance, technology, healthcare and public policy.⁠[5][4]

On the Pfizer board she chairs the audit committee and serves on the regulatory and compliance committee and the executive committee.⁠[1]

On November 8, 2026, the NVIDIA board began an independent investigation in light of reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort, overseen by a committee of independent directors assisted by outside independent counsel; the board said it had no reason to believe that national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised. On November 10, the independent directors announced that they had retained Joon H. Kim, former acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and his firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to conduct the investigation.⁠[6][7]

On November 11, the board accepted Jensen Huang’s resignation as president, chief executive officer and director, appointed Colette KressColette KressColette Kress is an American business executive who has been executive vice president and chief financial officer of NVIDIA since September 2013 and, since November 2026, also its interim chief executive officer following the resignation of Jensen Huang; she previously held finance positions at Texas Instruments, Microsoft and Cisco.Open the full entry interim chief executive officer and named Harvey C. JonesHarvey C. JonesHarvey C. Jones is an American entrepreneur and investor in electronic design automation who co-founded Daisy Systems in 1981, led Synopsys from 1987 to 1998 and co-founded Tensilica in 1997. An NVIDIA director since 1993, he became NVIDIA’s first-ever chair of the board on November 11, 2026.Open the full entry the company’s first-ever chair of the board; the company announced the changes on November 12.⁠[8][9]

NVIDIA: Official website: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/ (opens in a new window).⁠[10]

Goldman Sachs: Official website: https://www.goldmansachs.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[11]

PfizerPfizerPfizer Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company headquartered in New York City, incorporated in Delaware in 1942 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange; its products include Eliquis, Prevnar, Vyndaqel, Comirnaty and Paxlovid.Open the full entry: Official website: https://www.pfizer.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[12]

University of Southern California: Official website: https://www.usc.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[13]

Brookings Institution: Official website: https://www.brookings.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[14]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzanne-nora-johnson-7883a77/ (opens in a new window).⁠[15]