Dr. Julie M. Smith is a distinguished behavioral scientist and entrepreneur with over three decades of global experience in organizational behavior change and strategy execution. A member of West Virginia’s Business Hall of Fame, Julie’s tools and methods have been identified as best-in-class by multiple independent benchmark studies, and are widely used in businesses and industries around the world.
Julie began her career with doctoral research at West Virginia University’s Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and Development (CESD), where she helped pioneer one of the most powerful and practical behaviour-centric management systems available today. That work led to her co-founding the Continuous Learning Group (CLG), later known as ALULA, a leading global consultancy in behavior-based strategy execution. Over the following nearly-30 years, Julie helped organizations implement sustained, scalable change, producing dramatic results in safety, customer satisfaction, leadership development, and operational performance. In a 2011 interview with The New York Times, then-Novartis CEO Joseph Jimenez cited Julie’s advice as pivotal in reshaping his leadership of the organization. Committed to continuing the work, Julie recently co-authored Vital Behavior Blueprint: 5 Steps to Embed Mission-Critical Habits Into Your Organization’s DNA (2024), helping distil experience gathered over these decades of practice into a useful guide for leaders.
As well as being a Trustee with the Interactivity Foundation, Julie currently serves as CEO of Performance Ally, where the organization’s flagship application “Ally Assist” aims to replicate the personalized behavioral change guidance typically offered by seasoned organizational consultants and coaches. She is a Trustee of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies and has served on several non-profit boards, including the WVU Medicine health care system. She was an Expert Faculty Member of the National Research Corporation (NRC) Picker Institute, and was the only behavioural scientist on a national panel of 23 healthcare professionals. In 2024, Julie was honored to receive the Outstanding Contributor Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Association for Behavior Analysis International.
Julie lives with her husband Mickey Heston in Fairmont, West Virginia, where they founded Heston Farm—an escape and gathering place for their children, grandchildren, and friends. As Julie puts it, the farm has helped them understand why George Washington said, “I’d rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world.”
