Julie is the Managing Director, Audit, Head of Talent & Culture at KPMG. In her role, she leads the Talent and Culture initiatives for Audit including including compensation, benefits, campus and experienced hire recruiting, training and talent management.

Julie believes that building a great employee experience begins with prioritizing employee feedback and is achieved through strategic partnerships with the C-Suite. During a 12-year career at BKD CPAs and Advisors, she leveraged this philosophy to build an HR department from the ground up and operationalize the people function to provide high levels of internal service to employees and leaders. This included creating effective hiring practices, optimizing performance management programs, delivering a comprehensive total rewards package, and maintaining high levels of compliance.

In addition to building an HR Department, Julie was a catalyst for change as she facilitated the transformation of BKD’s people first culture. This included enhancing benefits, reinventing performance & feedback, implementing a parental leave program, launching a bonus structure, building career progression models for internal firm services, and much more. These improvements led to strong retention rates as well as increasing levels of engagement from team members, which contributed to high firm performance.  

During her career, Julie has played a key role in navigating the important people aspect of dozens of mergers and acquisitions, including the merger of equals in 2022 between BKD and DHG. She has influenced every aspect of the process, including negotiations, change management, compensation equalization, onboarding, and cultural integration. Through these transactions, she has placed high importance on creating a great experience for employees and new leaders as they are integrated.   

In her more than 25 years of HR experience, she has remained committed to lifelong learning and advancing the human resources profession by serving in a variety of leadership positions for local and state HR associations as well as mentoring young professionals launching their HR careers. She has received recognition with the Springfield Business Journal’s Top HR Professional of the Year and Most Influential Women awards.

Julie is an active member of the Society for Human Resources Management where she holds the Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP) designation. She also holds the Senior Professional in Human Resources® (SPHR®) designation from the HR Certification Institute®. Julie is a graduate of Missouri State University, Springfield, with an M.B.A. degree.