Julie Petrokubi

(she, her, hers)

Managing Researcher, Equitable Learning Environments

Julie’s work is grounded in an ecological system approach that looks at young people within the context of their peers, families, schools, and communities. This includes advancing the use of asset-based practices that support the whole young person (social, emotional, academic, and civic development); promoting the well-being and inclusion of all youth and adult members of a school community; and fostering two-way partnerships among educators, young people, families, and communities.

Julie is passionate about efforts that empower and engage young people and their families in addressing issues of equity both inside and outside of school systems. She studied youth-adult partnership for over a decade and is honored to support projects that connect with her roots in community organizing and youth work.

After two decades designing and managing programs in the nonprofit sector, Julie now works at the intersection of data, policy, and practice to increase the connections across the three. This includes studying innovative practices that emerge from the field, engaging partners in co-design of research and evaluation projects to ensure that they address issues of concern to communities, facilitating development of theories of action, developing the evaluation capacity of organizations, and coaching system and community leaders in using research and data to promote system change.

Julie specializes in collaborative research and evaluation to understand organizational and systems level change from multiple perspectives. This includes using implementation science to understand the scale and spread of transformative practices across school systems and communities. Through this work Julie partners with community-based organizations, local and state education agencies, national technical assistance providers, and grantmakers. Current and recent partnerships focused on issues such as youth reengagement, family engagement, social and emotional learning, and project-based learning.

Throughout this work, Julie works to ensure that our data practices and products are accessible, actionable, and just.

Education

• Ph.D., Youth, Organization and Community Development, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Education means...

Challenge and growth

Is cereal soup? Why?

Ick. I like soup too much to say that

If I was an animal, I would be...

An osprey