The Mormon Outmigration Leadership History Project was established in the mid-1980s in the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences at Brigham Young University. It was later transferred to the Marriott School of Management, where it remained until the project was completed in 2007.

The project worked to collect oral histories and other documentation about Latter-day Saints that migrated out of Utah and took up leadership roles in business and communities elsewhere in the United States. The project was administered by G. Wesley and Marian Ashby Johnson.

G. Wesley Johnson Jr. was born April 28, 1932, to George Wesley Johnson and Matilda Zoe Hansen, in Mesa, Arizona. Wesley attended Brigham Young University and Harvard University, then went on to receive a PhD in history at Columbia University, where he edited, co-edited, or co-authored books and essays on twentieth-century African political history. Wesley began his teaching career in history at Stanford University in 1965, then moved on to teach at University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1972. In 1984, he began teaching history and political science at Brigham Young University, as well as a professor of business history for the Marriott School of Business. Wesley was also instrumental in building and then directing the Family and Community History Center at BYU, as well as the Mormon Outmigration Leadership History Project. After retiring in 1997, he continued to administer the Project with his wife, Marian Ashby Johnson, until it was completed in 2007. Wesley founded "Dialogue, A Journal of Mormon Thought," with Eugene England, and "The Public Historian: Official Journal of The National Council for Public History." On November 16, 2018, Wesley passed away in Provo, Utah.

Marian Ashby Johnson grew up in Provo, Utah, graduating from Provo High School. She studied music at Brigham Young University and at the New York City Mannes School of Music. In New York, she taught at the Lenox School for Girls, and met and married G. Wesley Johnson. Marian received an M.A. and PhD in art history, specializing in European and African art, at Stanford University. She worked for Santa Barbara City College, then later as a history and art history professor for BYU. She studied and collected art from Africa, particularly Senegal. Marian and her husband, G. Wesley Johnson, had four children. They co-authored "Centennial Utah; The Beehive State on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century," published in 1995. Marion and Wesley administered the Mormon Outmigration Leadership History Project after Wesley’s retirement in 1997 until 2007.