Julie has written articles on the new geography of innovation for the Harvard Business Review, Fortune Magazine, Quartz, and The Guardian.

Since 2014, Julie has traveled to cities and regions globally to help leaders and communities understand these emerging trends. As global thought leader on the subject, she is regularly asked to speak at highly visible and influential events and help local stakeholders devise strategies for advancing their emerging innovation district. Her work has also extended into master planning, where she has designed the economic underpinning of impressive plans for rising cities. In 2017 and early 2018 alone, Julie has engaged with local leaders in the following cities: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Dublin, the Hague, London, Melbourne, Milan, Mountain View (Silicon Valley), Rotterdam, Sheffield, and Sydney.

She has also trained numerous European cities on how to design public involvement strategies for large-scale urban projects. She is the author of a European Commission handbook on the topic, which was subsequently translated into six languages.

A trained city planner, Julie served as a deputy planning director for the District of Columbia where she developed the city’s long-range plan, orchestrated the development of plans for more than one hundred neighborhoods, and managed all controversial land use disputes. She also designed a library revitalization strategy with the District of Columbia Library Board of Trustees.

Wagner earned a Masters in City Planning from MIT and holds a Bachelors in Organizational Communication from Northeastern University. Julie has received several planning awards from MIT and the American Planning Association for her work. She was trained in conflict resolution and police mediation.