Julie Cousler Emig

Julie Cousler served in Bridging the Gaps in 1996 through her Social Work program at Temple University leading a group of Philadelphia high school students on a community project in Central Philadelphia to beautify a vacant lot and check in on elderly neighbors in the heat. From there she received her Master’s degree in Social Work with a concentration in administration and social planning. After graduate school Julie Cousler served at Congreso de Latinos Unidos for ten years as the Vice President for Health and Wellness where she led a $5 million division of critical health services, after coordinating the maternal and child health programs for a year. Then in 2009, she served as Senior Policy Fellow for the Stoneleigh Foundation addressing truancy and chronic absenteeism through cross-systems work with the City, and she served as Deputy Director for Concilio 2011 to 2014, the city and state’s oldest Latino non-profit organization, where she provided strategic vision and oversight to health and social services with responsibility for fundraising and development, and strategic communications and community engagement.

Today in 2021 she serves as Executive Director of Education Plus Health working to bring the non-profit’s successful school-based health center (SBHC) model to scale, and as executive director of the Pennsylvania School-Based Health Alliance, a non-profit she founded in 2020 with other SBHC advocates from across the state.

Julie Cousler has served on numerous boards of directors in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania including the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women, the Seybert Foundation, the Pan American Academy Charter School, the Women’s Medical Fund Board of Directors, and the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence. She has held officer positions on all of these boards. She has also earned a variety of prestigious awards for her work including the 2020 Social Innovations award for health care innovation, the 2006 Purple Ribbon Award from Lutheran Settlement House for her domestic violence work, and the 2004 Forum Award from the Forum of Executive Women.