Julie Lockwood is the Director, Business Modernization for IDA, a position she assumed in 2021. She is responsible for providing strategic leadership, project management, and direction to IDA’s multi-year Business Modernization initiative.
An economist, Julie’s skills and experience span the subdisciplines of labor, health, and computational economics. She also brings a background in corporate finance and accounting to IDA’s business transformation. She joined IDA in 2014 as a member of the research staff in the Strategy, Forces and Resources Division (SFRD) of IDA’s Systems and Analyses Center. During her time as an IDA researcher, she built and led the Human Capital Group within SFRD, a team of researchers that uses data analytics, machine learning, and applied econometrics to address Department of Defense (DOD) personnel and readiness issues. She led development of the Finite-Interval Forecasting Engine machine learning toolkit and its application to person-level DOD attrition modeling in the Retention Prediction Model. She conceptualized, led cross-institutional requirements development, and directed beta testing for the DOD’s Enterprise Data to Decisions Information Environment (EDDIE), a forthcoming collaborative personnel analytics space that is now hosted within the Advana advanced analytics environment. She also developed IDA’s Personally Identifiable Information Enclave, a corporate resource that enables wide-ranging, data-driven research in a variety of fields.
A gifted researcher and communicator, Julie is passionate about her work, the professional development of her colleagues, and the quality of IDA’s research for its government sponsors. She has led cross-institutional efforts to provide opportunities for open-source model development, improve peer review, and expand responsible use of techniques that leverage large data sets at IDA and other organizations that support DOD. As chair of the Social Science Analytics Working Group at IDA, she further improved DOD analyses by championing development of new techniques, integration of academic research, and the development of IDA’s Metadata Hub.
Julie holds both a doctorate and a master’s degree in economics from The University of Texas at Austin and another master’s degree in economics from Boston University. She worked as a CPA and an auditor for large, multinational firms prior to attending graduate school.