Julie Carter, JD, a medical legal professional with extensive experience in health care, has been named Vice President of Mission Services for St. Mary's Health Care System, which includes hospitals in Athens, Lavonia and Greensboro, as well as  numerous physician practices, outpatient facilities, an assisted living community and home health care/hospice services.

"Julie brings a wealth of knowledge and real-world experience in mission services to St. Mary's," said President and CEO Montez Carter. "She has demonstrated great success in providing guidance on complex health care issues to major academic and medical centers and in collaborating with physicians, colleagues, patients and outside agencies to find solutions to problems."

St. Mary's Mission Services Department works to foster the system's commitment to its mission, which is to serve as a compassionate and transforming healing presence within the communities it serves. Services of the department include pastoral care, language interpretation, service recovery for inpatient care, ethics, advance directives and more.

Carter comes to St. Mary's from Via Christi Hospital in Manhattan, Kansas, where she served as a mission leader intern. Prior to that, she worked as a consultant in Lawrence, Kansas, where she helped develop the framework of a medical legal partnership between Lawrence Memorial Hospital and the University of Kansas School of Law to address critical unmet needs of the community's most vulnerable residents.

In addition, she has served with Fields of Promise, a Lawrence-based charity addressing poverty and blindness in Ethiopia, and as an associate general counsel with Yale University in New Haven, Conn., an attorney with Wiggin & Dana in New Haven and with Ice Miller in Indianapolis, and as a staff economist with Swidler & Berlin in Washington, DC.

Her community service activities and faith involvement include serving with the Lawrence Schools Foundation, the Lawrence Arts Center board of directors, VA Connecticut Health System, and in roles such as prayer and Bible study group facilitator, Eucharistic minister and Catechist at several Catholic churches in the communities in which she has lived.

Carter received her bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her juris doctorate from the University of Virginia School of Law. She also earned a certificate in health care ministry leadership from Loyola University in Chicago, and is currently working toward the requirements for a master's degree in health care mission leadership, also from Loyola.