Julie Thorud Adrianopoli ’99 never quite reached a B average here, but it’s doubtful that anyone who experienced her then would contest the assertion that Julie was one of the most complete students to walk the Quad. She was a fine track athlete; wrote well for the Carroll News; played, as a student worker, a significant role in gathering the data that underpinned the conceptual vision of the Dolan Center, and was a marvel of dedication to community service.

The centerpiece of the highlight film was the playground, MPower2Play, created at the Margaret Ireland School in Cleveland’s central city. She was not alone on that project for which more than $100,000 was raised. Grant Mast ’98 and others were indispensable, but Julie was a wonder, as were her parents. Five times Elinor Thorud drove 12 hours each way from Wisconsin to help make tha playground a reality – help meaning, among other things, laying down blacktop and mixing concrete.

The Illinois Arts Alliance's Adrianopoli is seen here with Illinois Congressman Dany Davis in March 2004

The university’s annual report that year featured a full-page photo of Julie with the Ireland gang and her quote: “Empowering people is not a grand concept. It’s doing little things for others on a daily basis. It’s really nothing more than caring for your neighbor.”

Post diploma, Julie got the grades in earning
an MBA at Case Western Reserve. She sampled the corporate world as an Ernst and Young consultant, but “felt isolated from community issues, and wanted to be on the ground working with people and improving communities.”

She did that as the vice president for programs and services of the Community Partnership for Arts & Culture, part of the effort to enhance Greater Cleveland’s arts and cultural resources. Her participation ended last year when her husband of two years, Carlin Adrianopoli ’97, swept her off to his native Chicago, where he now serves as a restructuring consultant. In truth, it was not exactly an uprooting: Julie is a LaCrosse, Wisconsin native, and Chicago is both a great city and closer to home.

Julie’s job search took her to the Illinois Arts Alliance, where she is working territory similar to that of the partnership. The Michigan Avenue-based group enables non-profit arts organizations to better serve their communities. As the alliance’s public policy director, Adrianopoli lobbies keepers of the purse like Congressman Danny Davis so that short shrift isn’t given to that which nourishes the soul of the citizenry. What this requires of Adrianopoli is endless meetings throughout Illinois to nurture the advocacy efforts of local non-profits, as well as occasional forays into Washington.  With funding having twice increased, Julie has had an impact.



IMPACT (Involvement Motivates Personal Action and Challenges Teens) was the acronym of the organization she founded back at Aquinas High in LaCrosse. Her mission was to persuade the Catholic school’s administration to include a service requirement for graduation. The teenage effort revealed Julie’s characteristic big-picture leadership agenda. While she always puts her hands on the task – when other young couples are sleeping in on a Saturday, the Adrianopolis are likely to be painting neglected inner city classrooms – Adrianopoli is also invariably working to lead communities to make change.

Julie has a passion for being a leader and working to improve the vitality of communities, and that includes schools. She also feels strongly about the community she left behind in University Heights. “The experience I had at John Carroll was the foundation for my passion to help others.” Fr. Schell was the first person she met on her pre-college tour, and she’s stayed close to him, as she has to, among others, Boler School mentors Bob Ginn and Dr. Frank Navratil.

Julie has just undertaken another mission: being the president of John Carroll’s Chicago Club. “We’re hoping to re-energize the network of Chicago Carroll people, so they feel again what John Carroll meant to them and realize how they can continue to be involved through recruiting students and helping the university in other ways.”

“Helping,” as a community, one of the many communities in which Julie Thorud Adrianopoli participates and tirelessly works to improve.

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