Julia Char Gilbert is a Policy & Research Analyst at The Hope Center for Student Basic Needs. Her work focuses on the advancement of student basic needs security through state policies and programs.

Prior to joining The Hope Center, Julia worked as an anti-poverty policy advocate at the Colorado Center on Law and Policy, where she championed policies to improve access to affordable health care and public benefits programs. In 2023, she led legislation that made Colorado the first state in the country to ban credit reporting of medical debt.  

Previously, Julia worked as a policy and research analyst at the Colorado Health Institute. She received a Fulbright Award to work as a bilingual educator at a vocational school in Galicia, Spain. She also conducted public health research in Honduras and Ecuador with support from the Yale Institute for Network Science and the Yale College Fellowship for Research in Health Studies. 

Her work has been covered by major media outlets, including The New York Times, NPR, Politico, Bloomberg, and The Associated Press. 

Julia holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Yale College and is a graduate of the Multidisciplinary Academic Program in Human Rights at Yale. 

She was born and raised in Vermont and now lives in Philadelphia.