Julie Funasaki Yuen has more than 20 years of experience in marketing, advertising and public relations. She was most recently the director of communications at Mid-Pacific Institute where she was the editor and writer of the school’s bi-annual print and digital magazine, Mid-Pacific Today, and producer of all school marketing video and digital media messaging. She directed and determined strategy for school admissions marketing, public relations, social media, advancement, crisis and emergency communications. Julie launched the school’s first-ever, trackable digital admissions marketing campaign to leverage the millennial parent target demographic’s use of social media as a primary information source when deciding to apply to and enroll their children at Mid-Pacific Institute, resulting in a 20% increase in admissions applications. She also acted as the school’s chief storyteller and created content and strategic direction for stories and messages that reinforced Mid-Pacific’s core values and programming strengths. The Stacey Leong Design team designed the Mid-Pacific Institute Admissions Viewbook that directly applied data from the National Association of Independent Schools Jobs-to-be-Done report about the reasons why parents choose to send their children to private schools. 

Julie previously worked as the public information officer at the University of Hawai‘i – West Oʻahu. While there, she was selected for the University of Hawaii System President’s Emerging Leaders Program designed to identify and develop future campus and System leaders. She lead the UH West O‘ahu Communications Committee as chair during a two-year period while the University worked to gain re-accreditation, and co-wrote the UH West O‘ahu Comprehensive Communications Plan detailing the strategic direction of all University communications. 

Julie also assisted Chaminade University in developing the creative and strategic direction for the university’s 2023-2024 recruitment and enrollment cycle targeting new freshman students. She held multiple meetings and interviews with the Chaminade communications team and Chaminade alumni, as well as reviewed Chaminade market research. The market research data showed that local students in particular did not clearly differentiate between the Hawaiʻi four-year college campuses on Oʻahu (UH Mānoa, Hawaii Pacific University, Chaminade University etc.). After reviewing as much information as possible, she recommended a data-driven recruitment strategy for local and mainland/international students that focused on the connection between Chaminade’s Marianist Catholic foundational values and traditional Native Hawaiian values. The result is a campaign that appeals to Chaminade’s target audiences and clearly differentiates the university from other Hawaiʻi colleges and universities. Yuen wrote all content for the 2023-2024 Chaminade Admission Viewbook, five email blasts as part of the admissions marketing funnel, multiple fact sheets for the university’s graduate programs in psychology and family therapy, and a series of recruitment emails for the university’s flex online undergraduate programs targeted to non-traditional, returning students. 

Julie is a graduate of Punahou School and the University of California, Davis with a bachelor’s degree in communications and political science. She received a master’s degree in integrated marketing from the University of Colorado at Boulder.