Julie Averill is the CEO and Founder of Gold Thread LLC and the author of Chief Impact Officer (8080 Books/Simon & Schuster, June 2026). She spent eight years as Global CIO and EVP at lululemon, helping scale the company from $2 billion to over $10 billion while building one of the most gender-equitable tech organizations in the industry. Today she advises companies on AI strategy, organizational transformation, and the kind of leadership that actually changes culture — not just the org chart. She is a Forbes contributor, a faculty member at the UW iSchool, and a board director at INDOCHINO and Gorilla Commerce. Her work is grounded in a simple belief: the most powerful thing a leader can do is make it safe for people to tell the truth.
