about lorraine
LORRAINE COCHRAN-JOHNSON, served as an elected official in DeKalb County Georgia from January 2019 through February 2024. She started her career in advertising sales before becoming the General Manager of the Atlanta Daily World – Atlanta’s oldest black newspaper and one of the most influential black newspapers in the United States. As an entrepreneur she founded Salons Unlimited Magazine a direct trade publication that started with a 5,000 distribution in Georgia that grew to 31 U.S. cities with a 56,000 distribution and co-founded of United Front Media, a film, ideation, and content creation company whose clients included national recording artists, Fortune 500 companies and global brands.
Lorraine has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, National Public Radio and in the New York Times. She is the author of the DeKalb County Boxed Store Ordinance requiring mandatory distance requirements between dollar stores to stop negative effects and proliferation and the DeKalb Video Surveillance System Ordinance requiring mandatory video surveillance at gas and service stations to ensure public safety. Both ordinances have been used as model legislation in several states.
Lorraine was the 2023 Elected Official of the Year by the American Public Works Association and the 2023 Champion of Housing by Georgia ACT and received The Lifetime Achievement Award by President Joe Biden in 2023. She is a graduate of Troy University where she received a B.S. degree in Political Science and Criminal Justice; a M.S. in The Administration of Criminal Justice and received and an M.P.A. with a concentration in Economic Development and Grant Writing from Auburn University before attending John Marshall Law School. She holds an Executive Education Certificate from the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard University in Delivering Public Services: Efficiency, Equity, and Quality.