Julie Averill, CHIEF IMPACT OFFICE

Former CIO of lululemon and REI, Julie Averill, visits the store to launch her new book, Chief Impact Officer: Real transformation comes from human—not just artificial—intelligence, a playbook for executives and technology leaders navigating today's AI revolution, and reveals why authentic human leadership is your competitive advantage.

Every organization claims they're "doing AI," but many are just burning money on technology while ignoring the human intelligence required to make transformations stick. Julie Averill learned this the hard way while scaling lululemon from a $2 billion athletic apparel company to a $10 billion global powerhouse as their Global CIO.

In Chief Impact Officer, Julie pulls back the curtain on what actually happens when you try to transform a company. This isn't a polished case study or a consultant's framework. It's the messy, honest story of leading through a pandemic, building technology teams across three continents, and discovering that the hardest part of transformation has nothing to do with the technology.

As a lesbian in high tech and corporate retail, Julie learned that succeeding meant showing up as her authentic self - not despite her identity, but because of what that journey taught her about building trust. That realization allowed her to build an India Tech Hub with nearly 50% women engineers (earning NASSCOM's AI Game Changer Award), lead through a pandemic that turned every assumption about work upside down, and create the psychological safety that high-performance teams need. She discovered that influence without authority beats positional power, that vulnerability is a leadership competency, and that the professional masks that helped her climb the ladder were exactly what was holding her team back.

But she also made mistakes, faced failures, and had to unlearn decades of code-switching and strategic silence.

This book is for executives, technology leaders, and anyone responsible for driving change. It's for leaders tired of AI hype who want the truth: transformation requires psychological safety, not just algorithms. It demands vulnerability, not just vision. And it needs leaders who understand that culture isn't a soft skill - it's your competitive infrastructure.

With practical insights from building global technology organizations at lululemon, Nordstrom, and REI, Julie delivers a blueprint for leading in the AI era that's grounded in reality, not buzzwords. Because real transformation requires human, not just artificial, intelligence.

Julie Averill spent nearly three decades proving that culture isn't soft — it's the infrastructure that determines whether transformation succeeds or fails. As Global CIO and EVP at lululemon, she led an eight-year transformation that grew the company from $2B to over $10B in revenue while building world-class technology teams across the U.S., Canada, China, and India. She won NASSCOM's AI Game Changer Award in 2024 for building lululemon's India Tech Hub with nearly 50% women engineers. Prior to lululemon, she served as the first CIO of REI and held senior technology roles at Nordstrom. Today, through Gold Thread LLC, she advises boards, CEOs, and founders on AI strategy and organizational transformation, and serves as Independent Director at INDOCHINO and the University of Washington iSchool. Her debut book, Chief Impact Officer, publishes June 16, 2026 through Microsoft 8080 Books.

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