Trustee
Cincinnati, OH
Executive Director
Alpaugh Family Economics Center, University of Cincinnati
Julie Heath, Ph.D., is professor and executive director emerita of the Alpaugh Family Economics Center at the University of Cincinnati. She is also currently the lead judge and content creator for the National Economics Challenge and the National Personal Finance Challenge, conducted by the Council for Economic Education.
Heath joined the University of Cincinnati in 2012, assuming the leadership of the largest economics center in the network of state councils and centers. Under her tenure, the center developed an award-winning, animated platform ($martPath) for children in K-8. The $martPath resources expanded to include a series of puppet videos centered on economics and personal finance. These videos have won numerous Emmys and other awards.
Prior to Cincinnati, Heath served on the faculty of the University of Memphis, including a ten-year term as department chair. While there, she created the nation’s first statewide financial literacy program with a public-private partnership.
Heath has authored many scholarly articles, including one in the American Economic Review. She is also the co-author of a principles of economics textbook, written three primers on financial literacy, and one on microeconomics. She has received numerous research grants, including from the Rockefeller Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education. She was also a visiting scholar at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and a visiting research fellow at Princeton University.
While at the universities of Cincinnati and Memphis, Heath was recognized with several awards, including NEFE’s Impact Award, leadership awards from the National Association of Economic Educators, recognition from Money magazine as a “Money Hero”, and a "U.S. Professor of the Year" for Tennessee by the Carnegie Foundation.
Heath earned her Ph.D. in economics from the University of South Carolina, specializing in labor and quantitative methods.