Julie Martínez-Ortega, PhD, JD

Dr. Julie Martínez-Ortega was voted one of the Top 50 Influencers in U.S. Politics by Campaigns and Elections Magazine for her work on the 2014 Fannie Lou Hamer Report, the first-ever outside audit of Democratic Party spending. She is a national leader in progressive politics and policy and an expert on the New American Majority (progressive whites and progressive people of color), organized labor and employment matters, and health care policy.  

Julie has undertaken landmark research for numerous leading national foundations, major donors, the federal government, and labor unions on a variety of issues, including mapping the new electorate, targeting and modeling progressive voters, protection and enhancement of workers’ rights, health care access, quality and equity, and economic policies that mitigate income inequality. She served as senior advisor to the Democracy Alliance on research and data about voter behavior and has advised its Latino Engagement Fund as it developed a research agenda and quantitative metrics for the program work conducted by its grantees. As research director at American Rights at Work, she led all aspects of the advocacy organization’s research efforts. She was a visiting scholar at the Department of Health and Human Services where she designed and implemented cutting-edge quantitative research on race, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship, and language use in the area of health care cost, finance, and access.  

Julie is a Tejana from South Texas. She graduated from Stanford University with a degree in human biology (and a concentration in health policy) as a first-generation college student and earned a law degree from UCLA as well as a PhD and master’s degree from the Heller Graduate School of Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. Her dissertation, “Health Insurance Enrollment Patterns of Mexican American Children,” won the Minkoff Prize in Health Economics.