At home in the Pacific Northwest, Courtney C. Johnson is a retailer and cheese educator who has come a long way from her upbringing in rural Arizona.
In 2020, she started a mobile cheese shop, Street Cheese, with long-time friend and colleague, Tailor Kowis. Street Cheese is becoming a brick-and-mortar cheese shop as of 2025.
Courtney has garnered several accolades along the road in her cheese career. She is an American Cheese Society Certified Cheese Professional (ACS CCP) and Certified Cheese Sensory Evaluator (ACS CCSE). She is a graduate of Cheese State University, the Master Class in Cheese at the San Francisco Cheese School, and has passed the Associate exam in the Academy of Cheese.
Courtney has placed second in the Cheesemonger Invitational in San Francisco in 2019 and 2022. She won the Cheesemonger Invitational: Masters competition in New York in 2023 and went on to compete in the Concours Mondial du Meilleur Fromager in Tours, France, in 2023, where she placed seventh. In 2025 she placed second in the Cheesemonger Invitational and will return to France for a second shot at the Mondial in September 2025.
Courtney taught as an adjunct professor at Seattle Central College’s Seattle Culinary Academy and served as executive director of the Washington State Cheesemakers Association. A PhD with a passion for cheese, Courtney started writing The PhCheese blog as a baby cheesemonger in 2016 right after graduating from UC Berkeley with a PhD in German and a Designated Emphasis in Film & Media Studies.
Aside from pursuing all things cheese, reading, and writing, Courtney enjoys making mixed-media cards and paper-crafts, cooking and gluten-free baking, organic gardening, and studying about all manner of fermented foods.