"I’ve worked with a lot of strategists. I’ve worked with a lot of creatives. I’ve worked with a fair number of hyphenate strategist-creatives. Johanna is in a class of her own. Equally gifted as a researcher, strategist, and writer, she is the partner for whom accuracy and quality is just the baseline. She is able to pick out the big ideas from complex, dense sources, and frame them to honor her audience. The end product–whether analysis, position, message, or content–is flawless, and gets results for our happy clients. Last but certainly not least, she is a genuinely lovely person–whipsmart, innovative, and collaborative. A Renaissance woman in every sense, and the best hiring decision anyone could make." --Kacy Karlen, Creative Director, Captains of Industry

"But our greatest gratitude must be reserved for the leader of the team that managed the research and writing process, Johanna Woll. Confronted with a boundless demand for more data, and with authors alternately intractable and inert, Johanna resolutely pushed this work to completion with good thinking, good sense, and good grace. Without Johanna, It's Alive would have died." --Christopher Meyer and Stan Davis in Acknowledgements, It's Alive, p. 258

This award recipient has been described as "a model self-starter"--"a consummate professional," who is "extraordinarily productive and proactive." This individual has taken a 120,000-piece collection that one nominator described as "disparate, and at times, desperate," and, with astonishing entrepreneurial initiative, turned it into a "bona fide internationally known teaching and research collection." This staff member has continually sought creative new ways to raise the profile of the collection to encourage MIT faculty and students, as well as scholars around the globe, to tap its wealth of information. She attended courses taught by MIT faculty, collaborated with editors and directors of an international online community, created a database to improve access, and has pushed to digitize the collection so that it finds the widest audience possible. "She has won the respect of her colleagues and the faculty for her smart and thoughtful stewardship" said one nominator. Another commented, "Her oversight has led to the increased usage of, and prestige for, this department in particular, and the Libraries and MIT in general." Her creative approach also makes her a strong contributor to the committees on which she serves. She "remains impressively up to date on new developments in the field" and is likely to be the one who "clarifies potential confusion in procedure, or defuses tension between different personalities." In the words of one nominator," she is a colleague of the highest caliber in her attention to creating a workplace comfortable for all." Another nominator remarked that she is "always ready with help or the cloudy-day quip." For reorganizing the Aga Khan visual archives into a well-respected and accessible teaching collection, and for her contribution of "good ideas and perceptive insights" across the Libraries, the 2005 Infinite Mile Award in the category of Innovation and Creativity goes to Johanna Woll.