Julie Hill, Founder, The Hill Company & Director, Anthem
Julie Hill is a member of the board of directors of Anthem (a Fortune 50 company and the largest U.S. health insurance company by member), The Lord Abbett Family of Funds, (a $180 billion New York-based mutual fund management firm), and UNYQ, a Silicon Valley based medical wearables company.
Podcast
Overview
Today on our show we have a leader who has fought for what she truly believes in her whole life, Julie Hill in conversation with our host Ashutosh Garg. Julie is the Founder of The Hill Company, Director of Anthem which is a Fortune 50 company, she also sits on the boards of many companies and does philanthropic activities in the US.
Julie shares her story of becoming a CEO at a very young age. She has worked her way up through sheer hard work and determination. Being a corporate leader for so long, she tells us what makes a CEO, a good one, she truly believes in servant leadership where the employer is responsible for the growth of his employees and gives back. She then shares an interesting anecdote from her own life when she was made the sustainability head in her office because of being a woman. She then discusses how things have changed since then and sustainability has become a major part of all the organizations, she believes that we have only a few years left to save the planet.
Julie sits at several boards of many big companies and she shares how she determines which board to sit on, she meets the auditors and the lawyers of the company and then finds out the philosophy of the CEO to understand what he believes in, she wants the company’s boards to be equitable, diverse, and transparent. Julie then shares her take on gender balance at the corporates and what can be done to bring a state of balance. She opines in the favour of quotas and reservations for women but at the same time the women must be suitable for the job.
Julie suggests that people should talk and try to understand where the biases come from in the first place to remove them from the workplace. Tune in to listen to her incredible journey!
“A good leader actually is a servant who gives back”- Julie Hill
Profile
Julie Hill is a member of the board of directors of Anthem (a Fortune 50 company and the largest U.S. health insurance company by member), The Lord Abbett Family of Funds, (a $180 billion New York-based mutual fund management firm), and UNYQ, a Silicon Valley based medical wearables company. She was previously on the board of Lend Lease, based in Sydney, Australia, (a $9 billion international construction, development, investment and management firm, publicly traded on the Australian exchange), and Holcim (US), the US operation of a Swiss company, as well as several other public corporate boards. Ms. Hill founded Hillsdale Development, a home building and land development company based in Newport Beach, California, in 1998, which she sold in 2003, and The Hill Company, which has a portfolio of interests. From 1991-1998, Ms. Hill was president and chief executive officer in the US of Costain Homes, a division of the Costain Group based in London, England. She was previously a senior executive with Mobil Land Development Corporation in Atlanta, Georgia, a division of Mobil Oil.
Ms. Hill is active in numerous philanthropic endeavors. She is currently Chair of the Board of Trustees of the University of California at Irvine (UCI), and is a past Chair of the UCI CEO Roundtable. She is a board member of Leaders’ Quest, and the Alliance for SoCal Innovation. She was a long-time Chair of the board of directors of Human Options, a shelter for abused women and children. As CEO of Costain Homes, the company built the ULI award‐winning domestic violence shelter. She served on the board of directors of the Orange County Community Foundation. She is a member of the International Women’s Forum and Los Angeles Trusteeship, and is a prior member of the Women’s Leadership Board of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She has traveled to Burma to work with refugees, is a champion of various human rights organizations and several international women’s rights philanthropies.
She is past Chair of the Paul Merage School of Business board, and has served in various other capacities for the School of Social Ecology, the School of Biological Sciences, the School of Humanities, and the Women’s Opportunities Center. She has received the Amelia Earhart Award from the Women’s Opportunities Center, as well as the Glass Ceiling Award from the American Red Cross.
Ms. Hill earned a bachelor of arts degree in English from UCLA, and a master’s degree in marketing from the University of Georgia. She lives with her family in Newport Coast, CA and London, England.
