The JTF is excited to welcome Julia Strauch to our team as our Senior Director of Finance!
Julia oversees organizational financial strategy, ensuring strong systems and processes are in place to support internal operations and external grantmaking. In this role, she works closely with the JTF leadership team to build and maintain financial structures that support economic opportunity in coal communities.
She brings more than 20 years of experience in nonprofit finance, operations, and consulting. Earlier in her career, she held program, operations, and finance roles at Teach For America, where she saw firsthand how strong financial systems empower teams to do their best work. She began her career as an elementary school teacher with Teach For America in Los Angeles and later practiced family law in Cook County, Illinois. More recently, she served as a consultant on BDO’s Nonprofit and Grantmakers team, where she coached senior nonprofit leaders and led engagements on strategic finance topics.
She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Classics and Government from Lawrence University, a master’s degree in Elementary Education from Loyola Marymount University, and a Juris Doctor from Loyola University Chicago, where she focused on child law. She also remains deeply committed to public service, currently serving on the Advisory Board of the Immigrant Defense Project and on the Finance Committee for Ammud: Jew of Color Torah Learning.
She lives outside Chicago with her husband and their three children. Outside of work, she enjoys cooking, baking bread, brushing up on her Latin, working on embroidery projects, and staying engaged in local politics.
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