Julie developed a passion for farming and food systems at a young age, and it led her to a Bachelor’s degree in Agriculture from Wilmington College of Ohio. She began her career at the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA), a sustainable agriculture non-profit organization, where projects included farmers’ market management, farm to chef programs, farm tours, fundraising, local food dinners, and local food consumer guides. After 5 years, Julie left PASA to consult directly with farmers, restaurants and caterers in their local food program development and marketing. In 2011, she brought her talents, passion and expertise to the Food Routes Network, coordinating the national branding and marketing campaign, Buy FreshBuy Local®.

With an interest in learning more of the viewpoint of food from the other side of the table, a few years ago she began working for Guckenheimer, a food service company in the business and industry sector, operating solely in corporate headquarters. This role focused on front-of-the-house and back-of-the-house margin improvement, business development, client acquisition and retention, retail marketing, catering programming, customer service practices and food branding. In 2018, Julie went back to work with farmers on a marketing and technology platform, called Harvie. She helped them build their farm share programs to a desired level of farm profitability, customer satisfaction and retention, which gives them a chance to compete in a consistently challenging marketplace. In partnership between workforce development non-profit Community Kitchen Pittsburgh(CKP) and economic justice non-profit Catapult Greater Pittsburgh, she joined forces with Paramount Pursuits on a curriculum to help them build knowledge and skills for budding food entrepreneurs in launching and growing their business. Prior to this role, Julie spent a year on the board at CKP followed by a year on staff as CKP’s Business Development Director. Today, Julie works as a Business Mentor at Paramount Pursuits. Julie is also currently enrolled in the MBA program at Chatham University. She also serves on the board of directors at La Escuelita Arcoiris.  Julie will serve as the Project Manager at Tech2Elevate.