Our beloved friend Julia (‘Jools’) joined Norwich High School in Upper 2 in 1969. Her father had been appointed Head of Langley School in 1965.

Her vibrant and energetic personality saw her engage in every aspect of school life with huge enthusiasm. She represented the school at lacrosse, netball, rounders, athletics and tennis and was always an inspiring Team Captain. She was a member of the school orchestra and wind quintet, playing the clarinet to Grade 8 standard and travelling with the orchestra on a school exchange to Heilbronn, Germany, in 1976.

Her leadership qualities were recognised when she was selected as Head Girl in 1977 and her academic prowess was acknowledged with the awards in 1978 of the May Rutledge Prize for Physics, Prize for Mathematics and Prize for Very Good Work. She also earned the 1977-78 Head Girl Prize.

Julia studied Civil Engineering at King’s College London and graduated with a First Class Honours degree. She was the first woman President of King’s College Engineering Society as well as Captain of the University of London Ladies’ Lacrosse team.

From 1983 to 1985 she studied for an MBA at University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business.

After early career experience in human resources with tech companies in California, Julia co-founded a technology firm in 1992, developing web meeting software. Its signature product, FacilitatePro, was a cutting-edge tool for innovative thinking and decision making.

Through a shared interest in the world of digital technology, Julia met Ray and they married in 2005 and formed an extended family network, with their siblings, nieces and nephews, on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 2011, Julia was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She met this challenge with the same appetite for life, learning and sharing that characterised her, with little interruption to work, family or social life, and taking on a new role as an Ovarian Cancer Advocate, supporting other women with the same diagnosis. In 2012, she became a volunteer Board Member of an organisation called Reading Village in Guatemala, and travelled there to participate in the work of this educational charity. Julia and Ray were proactive in finding and trying treatments for her cancer and she lived well with it for the next eleven or so years, remaining active on the Board of the technology firm until retiring in 2016.

In 2020, she was visiting her mother in Loddon when the COVID-19 lockdown was imposed. Her intended three-week trip extended to three months. This was a bonus for her Norwich-based old school friends because it meant we were in closer touch, initially via Zoom, as everyone discovered this method of contact and then, as restrictions were gradually lifted, with socially distanced outdoor walks. It was a silver lining to the cloud of COVID that we had the opportunity to deepen friendships started fifty years earlier. It was also an opportunity to appreciate how wise, generous and inspiring she truly was. She was the one with the life-threatening illness but spoke lightly of it, if at all, and always focused her interest on her friends, and what was going on for us, and shared her helpful insights.

Julia visited Loddon and Norwich again in 2021, 2022 and in 2023, when she and Ray were due to attend a family wedding in the UK. Sadly, the cancer, having been controlled with treatment for 12 years, rebounded. Julia joined the wedding via Zoom from a ward at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. She and Ray were able to fly back to California. However, a few months later, Julia decided the moment had come to end treatment. She slipped away peacefully in her sleep at home in San Francisco, with Ray by her side, on 22 April 2024.

Words by Marg Holder and Wendy Chalfont.