Julie Naster is the Director of The Schnur Group’s Leader & Team Effectiveness Practice. Julie’s background is wildly diverse and bridges the often too separate practices of engineering and leadership. She has worked extensively in both worlds and is known for her ability to help leaders – especially those with technical training and orientation – develop authentic leadership presence, enabling them to engage their organization, produce better business results, and solve ambiguous business problems.

Julie began her career as a chemical engineer. She worked extensively as a consultant to the Department of Energy (DOE), providing project management, risk and safety analysis, and NEPA documentation for environmental restoration and waste management programs at several DOE sites.

Twenty years ago, Julie began a quest to help individuals and organizations deliver extraordinary results AND bring meaning to work by fully utilizing their true gifts. During this time, she has coached, consulted or trained over 1,000 leaders so each can better address challenges in technical and general business environments. In her work, Julie has observed that as engineers, scientists, financial experts and other leaders advance in their careers they often run into non-technical, interpersonal challenges that impede progress when strategic thinking, influence, facilitation, and leverage become critical. Julie helps them overcome these limitations.

In addition to working with individuals, Julie has helped teams and groups develop more effective ways to get work done and resolve the chronic conflicts among organizational silos. Specific projects include:

• Designed and facilitated launch and adjustment workshops that accelerated implementation of SAP across the HP notebook global supply chain.
• Designed and facilitated a series of workshops for Capital One Financial, consolidating direct marketing processes across 30 lines of business and reducing process cycle time from 72 days to 46 days with a reported savings of $200 million in the first year.
• Designed and facilitated supplier summits, enabling Capital One supply chain group to optimize and improve supplier interactions, processes, efficiency, and customer service.
• Worked with numerous leadership teams at a Fortune 50 company to improve their performance, resulting in significantly better results in plant operations, marketing, retail operations management, and other areas.

Julie is known for bringing heart while challenging her clients to grow and go beyond what they think is possible. She can also be counted on to design a conversational approach that helps groups work through even the most difficult issues.

Julie is a Newfield Certified Coach and Professional Certified Coach (PCC) with the International Coach Federation. She holds a B.A. American Studies and B.S. Chemical Engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Julie is an active and passionate volunteer and board member with Ignite, a Boulder-based non-profit that teaches snow sports to disabled athletes of all levels. She is also an aspiring potter. Julie is the proud mother of two young adults and happily partners with her husband Rob in ever-improving the rammed earth home they built in the mountains west of Boulder, Colorado.