Julia Turner - Class of 2015

Since 2015, Julia has been working in economics and economics policy. From 2023-24, Julia took a year off from her PhD program to work for the Biden Administration’s Council of Economic Advisers on economic policy issues. In her time at the CEA, Julia learned how to translate complex economic thinking into readable and actionable memos that can be digest in under five minutes. Learning to explain the thinking concisely after doing a lot of the heavy intellectual lifting on the backend to ensure that the policy is sound economically as well as working on student loan and education financing policy are invaluable experiences that Julia can now build on in her PhD program.  

As Julia continues her PhD work at Northwestern University, she mainly focuses on education policy and is particularly interested in alternative educational pathways — how can programs like apprenticeships or short-course certificate programs can be made more appealing and accessible to students of all backgrounds. Making college affordable for all students and holding colleges accountable for providing a product that is high-value is really important to her and a driving force behind her work and passion.  

Julia credits Overlake with providing her a strong foundation for argumentative and persuasive writing, noting that she didn’t quite understand just how strong the training was until college especially her post-grad and PhD work. “It can be hard to craft a convincing argument, especially under a deadline, and I think my English classes—but also classes across the Humanities—really prepared me in a way that I didn’t appreciate until recently,” notes Julia.  

Julia recently moved to New York with her new husband, Matt Klineman. The couple were married in summer of 2024.