Deb Johnston
Co-Founder & CMO of TonicDM
A co-founder, chief marketing officer, communicator and AEC technology leader, Deb Johnston brings deep expertise in project communication management, brand strategy, workflow clarity, institutional knowledge and human-centered technology.
Her career spans communication, technology, and the built environment, grounded in a belief in the creative power of people and the value of what they build together. At TonicDM, she helps architecture and engineering firms protect the conversations, decisions and project history that shape the work from first email to final deliverable.
As teams grow and projects become more complex, Deb is particularly interested in how firms can preserve the knowledge created along the way, making it useful not only to the project at hand, but to the people and projects that come next.
Deb specializes in helping architecture and engineering firms turn scattered project communication into clear, secure, and defensible institutional knowledge.
As Co-Founder and CMO of TonicDM, Deb helps lead a platform built for midsize to enterprise architecture and engineering firms that need project communication management capable of scaling with the pace, complexity, and collaboration of modern practice.
Her background in AEC software, project information management, industry storytelling, and firm-focused communication gives her a sharp perspective on why project data is only useful when the context around decisions remains visible, searchable, and protected.
She understands that architecture and engineering projects live in the conversations that shape them, and that better project outcomes depend on safeguarding the emails, drawings, revisions, transfers, and decision trails that reveal how work actually moved forward.
Deb’s work reflects a deep passion for people, creativity, building, and practical technology that supports real project teams. Through TonicDM and To Build is Human, she continually brings clarity, empathy, strategic communication, and human-centered insight to the conversations shaping the future of the built environment.
Deb Johnston Joins DATM 2026 As A Project Communication and AEC Knowledge Management Voice Empowering Architecture and Engineering Firms Through Human-Centered Data Strategy.
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