Notes From a Founder

The modern founder wears many hats, and that’s not a liability. It’s a strength. Julia Stewart, Founder & CEO of Alurx, learned that long before she became an entrepreneur. In this new Leadership Series "Notes From a Founder", we explore the hyper-hyphenate life of trail blazing women building high performing teams and innovative business solutions.

For Julia, her experience at Taco Bell taught her what it really means to be a hyper-hyphenate leader. She held various operations roles with increasing responsibility, overseeing both company-owned restaurants and franchise operators. On any given week, she wore many “hats”, including:

✔️ Ensuring her direct reports held both company and franchise operators to the highest standards.
✔️ Making sure training and certifications were flawlessly executed.
✔️ Reviewing weekly operating scores — sales, traffic, food and labor — and ensuring they met or exceeded budget.
✔️ Executing corporate initiatives such as marketing programs, new product launches, and delivering measurable results.
✔️ Building a high-performing team inside a matrix organization where finance, marketing, real estate, HR, QA, and consumer insights didn’t report to me directly, but operated as one team.

That last one may have been the greatest leadership lesson of all for Julia:
"You don’t build teams based on org charts. You build them based on trust, shared wins, and esprit de corps. To this day, those leaders still refer to “our team". And we delivered the best results in the U.S. because of it."

She also learned to constantly wear the customer hat. Understanding the guest became a growth engine. It’s a perspective she has carried through every chapter of her career.

Today, as we build Alura AI, Julia is once again wearing multiple hats: founder, operator, advisor, and student of AI. Building something new doesn’t require a single title. It requires the ability to think across disciplines.

Be adaptable. Be curious. Be prepared.