Julia Cuba Lewis helps leaders grow so their organizations can too. She is a transformational leadership coach and consultant working with for-profit and non-profit organizations around the nation.

From 2006-2023, Cuba Lewis woke up every day driven by her mission as the CEO of Girls Empowerment Network, a Texas organization which helps girls discover they are powerful. Over her 17-year tenure, she tested various progressive leadership models, ultimately crafting a unique blend of distributed power and purpose-driven leadership. She and her team transformed the fledgling organization from serving 250 girls in central Texas into a statewide movement impacting thousands of girls and marginalized youth, delivering programs with statistically significant results. She not only facilitated exponential growth, but also ensured financial and cultural sustainability, culminating in a seamless, thoughtful transition to new leadership.

Prior to Girls Empowerment Network, Cuba Lewis worked for eight years at Girl Scouts of Central Texas running various outreach programs which served girls experiencing physical, mental and sexual trauma, homelessness, teen pregnancy, involvement with the juvenile justice system and/or the damaging impact of maternal incarceration. Her post-college career began in Chicago at several grassroots women’s agencies on equal employment opportunities, international women’s issues, mentor programs and emergency rape counseling.

Julia Cuba Lewis is the recipient of numerous professional and academic awards, including Austin Under 40. While earning her master’s degree at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at UT, she was honored as the NASW Student of the Year for the City of Austin and again for the State of Texas and was the student commencement speaker for her graduating class. She served as past Secretary and two-time Chair of the Austin Commission for Women and is a graduate of Leadership Austin and Leadership Texas. She served on the school board at Headwaters for 6 years - three years as a board member at-large, and three years on the Executive Committee chairing evaluation of the Head of School. She was also a Visiting Scholar and Community Sabbatical Recipient through The University of Texas Humanities Institute.

Cuba Lewis is an adjunct professor at the University of Texas where she teaches a master-level course on nonprofit management at the Steve Hicks School of Social Work. She also serves as the Treasurer on the board of IGNITE National, a nonpartisan nonprofit on a mission to build the largest, most diverse movement of politically engaged young women in the U.S. She moonlights with Motus9, a business consulting firm, to help organizations remove blind spots and go further faster to reach their vision.

Cuba Lewis is featured as the narrator and troop leader in an award-winning documentary about a program she directed while at the Girl Scouts called Troop 1500, which aired on PBS to more than 800,000 viewers in March 2006 and was highlighted in O Magazine, People Magazine, This American Life and won the “Audience Award” at SXSW. The documentary, about a Girl Scout troop with incarcerated mothers, had a successful U.S. tour with Cuba Lewis as its spokesperson and can still be seen on PBS today.