Executive Director, Education Plus Health

Julie Cousler is the Executive Director of Education Plus Health and also the Pennsylvania School-Based Health Alliance. Both non-profit organizations are working to advance health equity in Pennsylvania.

Ms. Cousler has spent her professional career working in Philadelphia to improve the health and social outcomes for the city’s most vulnerable citizens. As the Executive Director of Education Plus Health, she is working to bring the non-profit’s successful school-based health center model to scale, with sustainable revenue models for growth and expansion. She grew the organization from one school-based health center in 2013 to more than a dozen in 2022. She has led Pennsylvania’s collaborative vision for the growth of school-based health centers across the state establishing Education Plus Health as the Pennsylvania Affiliate to the national School-Based Health Alliance. In 2020 she took the necessary steps to found and incorporate a new non-profit organization to serve independently as the Pennsylvania School-Based Health Alliance.

Ms. Cousler has served on numerous boards of directors in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania; she presently serves on the board of directors for the national Battered Women’s Justice Project (BWJP). Most recently she also served as trustee for the Seybert Foundation, and held a number of leadership roles including chair of the Pan American Academy Charter School from 2011 to 2016. She has served on the Women’s Medical Fund Board of Directors and Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence. Ms. Cousler has earned a variety of prestigious awards for her work including the 2020 Social Innovations award for health care innovation, the 2006 Purple Ribbon Award from Lutheran Settlement House for her domestic violence work, and the 2004 Forum Award from the Forum of Executive Women. Beginning in 2009, she served as Senior Policy Fellow for the Stoneleigh Foundation addressing truancy and chronic absenteeism through cross-systems work with the City, and she served as Deputy Director for Concilio 2011 to 2014, the city and state’s oldest Latino non-profit organization, where she provided strategic vision and oversight to health and social services with responsibility for fundraising and development, and strategic communications and community engagement. Prior to this work she served as Vice President for Health at Pennsylvania’s largest Latino non-profit organization, Congreso for ten years where she led a $5 million division of critical health services. Ms. Cousler holds a Master’s degree in Social Work.

julie@educationplushealth.com