At the onset of her studies at Johns Hopkins University as a Biomedical Engineering student, Julia Fox knew she wanted her career path to be one that would make an impact on health and healthcare.
That devotion underscores a number of career moves she has made along the way, eventually bringing her to the Fogarty Institute as a Ferolyn Fellow, where she is receiving the support and guidance she needed to take her focus to the next level. While her end goal was always in sight, the Ferolyn Fellowship has given her the exposure and perspective she needed to define her voice and her role in driving healthcare innovation in a meaningful and sustainable way.
Throughout her career, Julia has undertaken a number of roles that have helped give her a holistic view of the healthcare industry.
Following her undergraduate studies, she was admitted to the prestigious Fulbright Scholar Program and spent a year in Denmark at the Aarhus University Hospital in the Orthopaedic Research Laboratory, studying the structure-function properties of bone as they relate to activity and aging. Julia continued this focus on orthopaedic biomechanics while earning her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley.
While her work as an academic researcher was challenging and interesting, Julia learned that it can be a long path to making a direct impact on patients. She went on to consulting, and then worked at Stanford University as the External Affairs manager of the pioneering interdisciplinary biosciences program, Bio-X.
Most recently, Julia held several management positions in R&D and upstream marketing at Abbott Vascular, where she deepened her knowledge in medical device development and commercialization. Julia also discovered a real passion for understanding the needs of the multi-stakeholder healthcare ecosystem and delivering products and services that address not only the needs of physicians, but also improve patient outcomes and reduce overall healthcare costs.
The Ferolyn Fellowship has helped Julia identify her path to turning that passion into action. Three months into her fellowship, Julia joined Siemens Healthineers as Director of New Ventures. In this position, she helps drive innovation in healthcare services, including digital health, education and enterprise services through internal and external incubation. In this capacity, she acts as the product development subject matter expert and is responsible for creating a startup environment within a larger company.
The conversations Julia had with her mentors as part of the fellowship greatly accelerated her growth as a leader in this rapidly changing healthcare environment. She has not only benefited from the mentorship but also the close interaction with the other two Ferolyn Fellows, Matt McLean and Kate Garrett.
“It’s been a truly unique opportunity to engage with experts across the healthcare community,” she said. “I look forward to giving back to this fellowship program and helping build a legacy that Ferolyn would have been proud to have her name on.”
The Ferolyn Fellowship was created as a tribute to the late Ferolyn Powell, an invaluable contributor to the medical device industry, with the goal to improve patient care by supporting promising entrepreneurs with strong leadership skills, passion and aptitude to transform healthcare.