Julia Bergeron-Smith

Julia is a Policy Associate at the Catherine Cutler Institute at the University of Southern Maine and serves as the Director of the Maine Statistical Analysis Center (SAC). She is a project manager, program evaluator, data analyst, and supervisor and has served in these capacities on multiple teams since 2013. While Julia’s focus areas include justice policy, child welfare, social policy, and community well-being, she considers herself a generalist who leverages her big-picture thinking, passion for project management, and deep commitment to collaboration to support partners in making strategic and informed decisions.

In addition to the array of research activities she conducts for the Justice Policy Program and Maine SAC, Julia provides program evaluation and consultation services to agencies, universities, and community-based organizations as an affiliate of the Data Innovation Project. She develops logic models, identifies program metrics, and conducts organizational assessments for formative and summative evaluations and to support federal grant applications.

In her early tenure at the Institute, Julia managed local, state, and nationwide training, technical assistance, and stakeholder engagement efforts for thousands of Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice grantees. Before joining the Institute, she worked at non-profits that serve historically underserved youth and young adults. Throughout her career, Julia has been strongly committed to fostering a collaborative learning environment and has sought and developed learning opportunities for her peers and supervisees. Julia currently serves as a co-facilitator of the Institute’s professional development team and supervises analysts across different program areas.

Beyond her professional pursuits, Julia sits on her town’s Parks & Recreation Advisory Board and serves as an election worker to help administer the elections for her community. She is an avid hiker and cook and enjoys spending time in nature or co-creating in the kitchen with her partner and their Great Pyrenees-Retriever.