Julie Morita
Julie Morita, MD, is President & CEO and board member of The Joyce Foundation. In her role, Julie oversees the charitable distribution of $65 million annually from assets of $1.3 billion. The Joyce Foundation funds the development and advancement of evidence-based policy reforms to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region.
Before joining The Joyce Foundation, Julie was executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) where she oversaw all programs and grantmaking aimed at creating a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right. In her role at RWJF, Julie led the development and implementation of an organizational strategic framework focused on addressing systemic barriers to racial and health equity.
Prior to her role at RWJF, Julie helped lead the Chicago Department of Public Health for nearly two decades, first as a medical director, then as chief medical officer. In 2015, she was appointed commissioner. In that role, she oversaw the public health needs of nearly 3 million residents in the nation’s third largest city.
As commissioner, Julie led the development and implementation of Healthy Chicago 2.0, a four-year plan focused on achieving health equity by addressing the conditions in which people live, learn, work, and play. She also chaired the Health in All Policies Task Force that included department heads of more than 30 different city agencies with the goal of developing policies and systems to assure that health impacts were considered and addressed in the work of all city agencies.
Born and raised in Chicago, Julie is a lifelong advocate of equity issues, deeply influenced by the experience of her parents, Mototsugu and Betty Morita, who were detained in the internment that incarcerated Japanese Americans during World War II. They were uprooted from their homes, communities, and jobs in the states of Washington and Oregon and transferred to a detention camp in Idaho. Having grown up hearing stories about the harsh and unjust treatment her parents, extended family members and thousands of others endured, Julie has used that knowledge and empathy to pursue racial equity and the creation of more just communities in every aspect of her work.
She has served as an advisor to the White House, U.S. Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and numerous state and local public health agencies. Julie is also a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases Board of Directors, and the Advisory Committee to the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Julie earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and her medical degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. She completed her residency at the University of Minnesota and began her medical career as a pediatrician in Tucson, Ariz., before moving into public health as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta (CDC).
Julie is married to William Trick. They have two young adult children, Megan and Jake.