Julie Kratz has dedicated her career to helping people be better allies. After spending 12 years in Corporate America experiencing many career “pivot points” due to the lack of belonging, she started her own speaking business with the goal of helping leaders be better allies. Promoting allyship in the workplace, Julie helps organizations foster more inclusive environments so that everyone can feel seen, heard and belong. She is a Forbes contributor, frequent keynote speaker, podcast host and TEDx speaker. She holds an MBA from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, is a Certified Master Coach, and is a certified unconscious bias trainer.
Julie has also been published on Entrepreneur, CNBC, The Good Men Project, The Forum On Workplace Inclusion, and more. She is the author of 6 books including Allyship in Action: 10 Strategies for Living Inclusively, Lead Like an Ally: A Journey Through Corporate America with Strategies to Facilitate Inclusion, a children’s book Little Allies, ONE: How Male Allies Support Women for Gender Equality, and more.
Find Julie at NextPivotPoint.com, on Forbes, or on LinkedIn.
As children in the 1980s, Uché Blackstock and her twin sister Oni watched their mother lead an organization of Black women physicians: fiercely intelligent women in white coats who cured ills and saved lives. Destined to follow in her footsteps, Uché and her sister went on to become the first Black mother-daughter legacies from Harvard Medical School.
But as her career continued as an ER physician and a professor in academic medicine, Dr. Uché Blackstock became profoundly aware of what she hadn’t seen as a child: the dangerous systemic barriers that Black patients and physicians face. In LEGACY: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine (Viking, January 23, 2024), Dr. Blackstock tells the incredible story of her career and reveals the deep inequities that still exist in American healthcare.
In a medical system where only 2% of physicians are Black women, Black Americans have far worse health outcomes than any other group in the country. LEGACY is a journey through the critical intersection of racism and healthcare, exposing a flawed system of practices and policies that jeopardize the well-being of entire communities. Following Dr. Blackstock’s odyssey from child to medical student to practicing physician, this captivating memoir not only explores the legacy of her mother and other pioneering Black physicians but also the long shadow of inequality in the United States healthcare system. With striking wisdom and inspiring leadership, LEGACY ultimately shows Dr. Blackstock’s path to realizing her own power as a health equity advocate against the backdrop of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.
In 2019, Dr. Blackstock founded Advancing Health Equity, an organization that aims to dismantle racism in healthcare and close the gap in racial health equities. She has been recognized by Forbes Magazine, Essence Magazine, the Black Voices for Black Justice Fund, the American Medical Student Association, and numerous other institutions for her work as a thought leader and advocate on bias and racism in medicine. A medical contributor to MSNBC and NBC News, Dr. Blackstock’s commentary on the latest news in healthcare has been featured widely.
Photo Credit: Diane Zhao
Prior to joining Rutgers University, Dr. Branch served as associate chancellor for equity and inclusion at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. Her significant accomplishments in that role included leading the integration of diversity throughout the campus strategic plan, executing the university’s campus climate survey, creating diversity infrastructure through climate advisors in executive areas and diversity officers in schools and colleges, and leading the National Science Foundation funded ADVANCE program pursuing innovative organizational change strategies to spur institutional transformation and support racial and gender equity in the faculty ranks.
A professor of sociology, Dr. Branch’s commitment to advancing equity extends to academic research on labor and work that explores the historical roots and contemporary underpinnings of racial and gender inequality. She is the coauthor of Work in Black and White: Striving for the American Dream (2022), coauthor of Black in America: The Paradox of the Color Line (2020), the editor of Pathways, Potholes, and the Persistence of Women in Science: Reconsidering the Pipeline (2016), and the author of Opportunity Denied: Limiting Black Women to Devalued Work (2011). A sought-after national expert on diversity in the academy, Branch serves on several advisory boards that aim to advance inclusive excellence within professional societies, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Action Collaborative, the Association of American Universities Racial Equity Advisory Board and more. Dr. Branch received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University at Albany, SUNY and her B.S. in biology from Howard University.
Her intersectional, cross-pollinating work—research, education, art, activism, and digital security—helps to create a more generous, global, expansive, and inclusive definition of South Asian identity, along with safe spaces from which to honor the stories of these communities. Thenmozhi’s work has been recognized by the U.S. Congress, The Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, The Producers Guild of America Diversity Program, The Museum of Contemporary Art, The Sorbonne, Source Magazine, Utne Reader, The National Center for the
Humanities, The National Science Foundation, The Ford Foundation, and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She is a frequent contributor on issues related to South Asia, caste, gender, and racial Equity, as well interfaith issues and peace building, and has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, Guardian, ABC, and NBC news. She was also an inaugural fellow of the Robert Rauschenberg Artist as Activist, Atlantic Foundation for Racial Equity, and is a current fellow at Stanford Center for South Asian Studies. You can order her new book The Trauma of Caste from North Atlantic Books to learn more about her work around caste equity, abolition, and healing.