Reid Bertone-Johnson received a B.S. from Tufts University, where he majored in geological sciences and environmental studies. He received an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1998. After five years of teaching earth science, environmental science and a wilderness survival course at Amherst Regional High School in Amherst, Massachusetts, Reid went back to graduate school to earn an M.L.A. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has worked professionally for Dodson Associates, a landscape architecture and planning firm in Ashfield, Massachusetts, and for the Library of American Landscape History. Bertone-Johnson has been at Smith since 2007 and has taught studio design for the art department and in the landscape studies program. He is currently faculty in landscape studies and staff in the Center for the Environment, Ecological Design and Sustainability as the manager of the Ada & Archibald MacLeish Field Station.

Since arriving at Smith, Bertone-Johnson has expanded the landscape studies studio program and integrated the work of his studio classes into projects important to both Smith College and the City of Northampton. He develops studio projects for his students that take advantage of his own expertise in sustainable landscape design, broad-scale landscape design, regional planning, and the interpretation and preservation of historic landscapes. His students generate creative solutions to complex problems for actual clients including the Ward 3 Neighborhood Association and the Mill River Greenway Initiative, both in Northampton.

In the fall of 2008, Bertone-Johnson led his landscape design studio to develop a master plan and system of interpretive trails for the Ada & Archibald MacLeish Field Station, the construction of which he is currently overseeing in his dual role as the manager of the field station. As manager of the Ada & Archibald MacLeish Field Station, he combines both his professional and academic interests in landscape design and planning. He is working to develop the field station into a world-class environmental education facility, and he engages Smith undergraduates in the process at every opportunity.