Juliana Nocker Ferry (she/her) is Director of Organizational Programs at Lumos Transforms. She oversees Lumos programs across sectors including healthcare, higher education, arts and culture, philanthropy, and social services, and specializes in directly managing complex systems-change projects. For the past three years she has been Lumos’ Program Manager for the embodied, trauma-informed, resilience-oriented Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Antiracism (EDIA) Initiative for the Los Angeles (LA) County Department of Health Services, the second-largest safety net healthcare system in the United States. In this ambitious, multi-year project, Lumos engaged thousands of Health Services workforce, patients, and community members in the creation of Health Services’ first-ever EDIA strategic plan. Once the plan was finalized, Juliana also coordinated ongoing capacity building training, coaching, and technical assistance to support DHS in EDIA implementation across the enterprise. In 2024, Juliana also oversaw a wide-ranging embodied, trauma-informed resilience-oriented (eTIRO) capacity building training and coaching program for 650 staff, leadership, and community partners of the LA County Department of Public Health.
Juliana first began working with Lumos Founder Nkem Ndefo more than twenty years ago, assisting Nkem in building her midwifery and holistic healthcare practices. She then became the Director of Operations for TRE Los Angeles, the trauma-healing and resilience-focused social enterprise eventually reborn as Lumos Transforms. After 13 years of working closely with Nkem, Juliana entered the nonprofit world as the Associate Director of Institutional Giving at St. John’s Community Health, a $100 million network of community health centers based in South Los Angeles. There, her work centered on building partnerships and funding for programs that addressed the social determinants of health and racial, ethnic, and gender inequities, including those for unaccompanied minors, people experiencing homelessness, families escaping intimate partner violence, and transgender folx. Juliana next became the Director of Grant Fundraising for Peace Over Violence, a 50-year-old multicultural, feminist organization dedicated to creating communities free of sexual, domestic, and interpersonal violence. In her time at Peace Over Violence, Juliana was responsible for raising 90% of the agency’s $5.5 million annual operating budget, and she supported a wide range of violence intervention and prevention programming, including Still I Rise, a resilience-focused sister circle group by and for Black survivors of domestic violence; legal services for immigrant families; sexual violence prevention programs for male allies; and the Youth Over Violence leadership institute. Juliana’s diverse professional resume has been united by curiosity and a deep desire to address systemic inequities and foster true health and wellbeing for individuals, families, and communities.
Juliana is the proud mother of four home-birthed children ranging in age from 14 to 24, and she lives with her husband and kids in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. She is a classically trained chef and enjoys cooking, interior design, walking her dog in the hills and reading.
At Lumos Transforms, Juliana provides:
- Program Management
- Partnership Development
- Strategic Planning
- Communications Support