Julian has spent the last decade working in higher education and nonprofit leadership to build justice centered sustainable communities. His work has ranged from leading the effort at Antioch College to build a sustainable farm to leading Zen Buddhist meditation classes while teaching in Kyoto, Japan. For the past six years Julian has been the Director of Community Outreach at Sterling, building relationships within the College and between the College and donors, foundations, government, and community groups.

Julian plans to design and teach courses at Sterling at the intersection of spirituality, the natural world, and social justice in the concentration of environmental humanities. His work addresses contextual thinking with an emphasis on understanding and uprooting racism and oppression. Julian recently joined the faculty and this spring of 2019 he will teach community organizing for social and political change.

He is a recent graduate of the Pacific School of Religion, part of the consortium among the University of California at Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union. He has served as a board member of local and national organizations including the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Craftsbury Prudential Water Board, and the Craftsbury Community Care Center. He currently serves as a Trustee and Pilgrimage Leader of the Living Legacy Project, an organization that leads civil rights pilgrimages in southern states.

Julian views social and political organizing as an indispensable piece of environmental stewardship education. Because climate change is one of the most critical issues facing humanity in the 21st century, Julian believes environmental stewards must be equipped to lead local change on a micro level and policy change on a macro level. Julian brings expertise as an activist/organizer, spiritual leader, and institutional leader. He has worked on local, state, and national political campaigns, including as an organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, and for MassEquality in Massachusetts where he organized for marriage equality.

Julian has been active in the fossil fuel divestment movement. Sterling College was the third institution of higher education in the United States to divest its endowment of fossil fuel extraction companies. Julian also helped to lead the successful effort to divest the Unitarian Universalist Associations nearly quarter billion dollar common endowment fund. He has worked with activist and financial professionals across North America to share and encourage best practices related to fossil fuel divestment.

An avid photographer, Julian enjoys capturing landscapes and portraits alike. In his down time, Julian enjoys skiing the Craftsbury Outdoor Center’s trails that run directly through campus and encompass over 90 kilometers. He lives on campus with his partner, Matthew Derr, who serves as college president. They raise a yellow lab named Harper and a tortoiseshell cat named Georgia.