Our Story
The story behind the name.
Kinected exists because of a name. The name exists because of Norah.
The Beginning
January 2021
In January 2021, my wife and I lost our daughter Norah to stillbirth.
We won't pretend to understand it. But the season we didn't choose taught us what we couldn't have learned any other way.
Out of that came a name — and a way of working that still carries her light.
The Name
Kin · Kinetic · Connected.
Three words braided into one. Each carries weight on its own. Together they describe how we show up.
Family bonds that outlast distance. Our daughter Norah remains part of our family — she shapes every decision we make. We bring that same posture to clients: you're not an account, you're kin while we're working together.
Transformative energy and forward momentum. The work isn't theoretical. We move ideas from sketch to in-market, and we keep moving once they're live. Stillness is the enemy of impact.
Relationships are the vehicle through which lasting change moves. Technology only matters when it brings people closer to the work — owners closer to their teams, businesses closer to their customers, missions closer to the people who need them.
The Light
Every business we serve already carries light of its own.
Norah means light in Hebrew. We didn't plan the symmetry — but it's the truest thing we can say about the work. The owners and teams we partner with already have something worth seeing: a why, a craft, a room full of people who care. Our job is to help that light reach further — past the next quarter, past the founder, past the room it started in.
Donald Johnson Jr. · Owner
The Hands
The hands behind the work.
By day, Donald is Chief Product Officer and a board member at a growing edtech company, where he oversees product and engineering. An Apple alum, he's spent nearly two decades inside tech companies — from consumer apps to small business tools to enterprise platforms.
He's worked as both a hands-on builder and a senior leader across product, customer experience, and technical implementation, including a prior run as Chief Customer Officer.
Kinected Solutions is the smaller room on purpose — the work he takes on outside of that. A few engagements a year, with owners he wants to sit with. He runs each one himself: strategy, design, and the build.
The businesses he sits with hold a street together, employ a few people well, and have never had a senior technology leader in their corner. Now they do.
Areas of Expertise
Where decades of practice meet today's tools.
- Product & Strategy
- Leadership & Org Design
- Customer Experience
- Systems Architecture
- Applied AI
- Voice & Conversational AI
- Edge AI
- SaaS
- EdTech
- E-commerce
- Field Services