AGU Announces Interim CEO

The executive committee is pleased to announce that Julie Freeman will serve as AGU’s interim executive director and CEO.

Julie will start 30 March, which will overlap with Chris’ last two days at AGU.

She most recently served as the interim executive director of the California Society of Anesthesiologists. Previously, Julie was the president of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) as well as the executive director of the Professional Picture Framers Association and Howard County (MD) Chamber of Commerce. During her time at these four organizations, Julie eliminated financial deficits and created programs that built and grew member value and membership. She has been a board member of African Library Project since 2016, which takes lightly used children’s books and creates libraries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

With Julie’s extensive background in leading non-profit organizations and serving as a transitional CEO, her experience will be valuable to ensure we advance AGU’s strategic plan and continue our programmatic work. She will focus on maintaining the organization’s momentum by partnering with our exceptional senior team and staff. She will also serve as a member of the transition team once we hire our permanent executive director and CEO.

I also want to update you on the permanent executive director and CEO search with Russell Reynolds Associates. We have started to screen candidates. The search committee has scheduled the first round of interviews this month. We anticipate presenting the final candidate to the AGU board in April. Despite the uncertainty around COVID-19, we are confident we will remain on schedule to announce AGU’s next CEO and executive director by the summer.

Please join me in welcoming Julie to the AGU community!