Julia Butler is a University Innovation Fellow and an undergraduate at the Gabelli School of Business at Fordham University. Originally from Boston, MA, Julia moved to New York City in 2017 to pursue her business career

Since arriving at Fordham University, Julia has become extremely involved in social innovation. She was a 2017-2018 Social Impact 360 Fellow, where she was trained and gained tools on how to build her own social enterprise. Throughout the course of the program, Julia built a social venture that won the 2018 Social Impact 360 national pitch competition. This year, she is excited to be mentoring the new class of fellows and teaching the curriculum at Fordham University. Julia has also been spearheading her campus's branch of the Social Innovation Collaboratory, sitting as a student leader on the executive board.

Julia's exposure to innovation began at an early age growing up in a family of educators and innovators. As a child, Julia was in integrated classrooms where her mom worked to make the curriculum more inclusive of children with disabilities. In high school, Julia began to question the traditional system inspired by the work her uncle, Seamus Foy was conducting in the Boston Public Schools. He created a school, Intrepid Academy, based on hands-on active learning outdoors. Watching the difference that that program made for students inspired her to start thinking outside of the box on how other traditional systems needed to change.

Julia is thrilled to be working with the University Innovation Fellows and gaining more tools to work toward changing these systems one student at a time!