Julie Peterson has spent more than three decades in healthcare and education, most of them helping people with brain injury rebuild their lives. As founding President of the Nevada Brain Injury Alliance, she brings survivors, families, and professionals together around one goal: making sure every Nevadan affected by brain injury has the knowledge and support to pursue recovery and independence.

Julie was recently elected to the Board of Governors of the International Brain Injury Association (IBIA), a global organization dedicated to supporting the multidisciplinary professionals who care for people with brain injury. She is also a member of the North American Brain Injury Society (NABIS).

Julie began her career as a speech-language pathologist. After a 1,000-hour post-graduate externship in neurological disorders at the Long Beach VA, she treated adults and children with traumatic and acquired brain injuries. She went on to lead inpatient rehabilitation and long-term acute care hospitals across the western United States for Kindred Healthcare and served as CEO of the Centers for Neurobehavioral Excellence. Today Julie is Director of the Nevada Community Enrichment Program (NCEP), a program of Accessible Space, Inc. and Nevada’s only nonprofit, post-acute comprehensive brain injury rehabilitation program. NCEP has held CARF’s highest level of accreditation since 1995 for adult and pediatric outpatient brain injury rehabilitation and adult residential brain injury rehabilitation. Julie has personally led more than a dozen successful three-year CARF accreditations, and under her leadership NCEP launched an AACVPR-certified cardiac rehabilitation program.

Education has always been at the center of her work. Earlier in her career, Julie was assistant principal of a Las Vegas magnet school that Magnet Schools of America named the top magnet school in the nation. She has since created and taught training programs for clinicians on disorders of consciousness, challenging behaviors after brain injury, and early mobility. In 2025 she co-presented at the Brain Injury Association of America’s Neuro Rehab Leadership Summit.

Julie holds a master’s degree in communicative disorders, summa cum laude, from California State University, Fullerton, and a master’s degree in educational administration from the University of Phoenix. She has held the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s Certificate of Clinical Competence since 1995.