Julie spent her early career in the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps before leaving to train and qualify as an operating department assistant in 1992. She then left her clinical role to embark on a career in medical sales and marketing.

She eventually reached the heights of European Business Development Manager, living and working in the Netherlands. In 2002, Julie returned to the UK where she worked in the commercial sector for another few years before returning to the NHS in 2005 as the Day Unit Development Manager at York District Foundation Trust. In 2007 Julie then moved on to NHS North Yorkshire & York where she begun commissioning urgent and emergency care services. For the last two years she has held the position of service development manager for the telehealth project.

In her spare time Julie is a volunteer specialist in Urban Search and Rescue, belonging to a British charity search and rescue team called International Rescue Corps (IRC) for the last 21 years. Julie has attended several overseas disasters predominantly earthquakes in places such as Pakistan, Columbia and Japan and UK disasters such as missing person searches, the Glasgow factory explosion, the Hull summer floods and Cockermouth floods. She successfully swam the English Channel in June 2011 raising much needed funds for IRC and carried the Olympic torch in Northallerton, North Yorkshire in June 2012.