Life Without Limits

“If you had no limits, what would you do?”

This was the question posed to Juli Anne Callis Lawrence by the man interviewing her for the position of VP of Emerging Technology and Business Development at the American Electronics Association Credit Union’s Silicon Valley location. The organization, founded in 1979 and later to become KeyPoint, was designed to serve the banking needs of individuals working with companies in the technology industry. The Credit Union was growing at warp speed just as the technology sector was beginning to see significant growth. As an early Apple and internet fanatic herself, Juli Anne had a feeling she had come to the right place, and when her interviewer posed that question to her, she knew the answer immediately. If she had no limits, she’d do exactly what she had always done, because Juli Anne Callis was raised believing there were no limits. It was a certainty ingrained in her throughout her charmed childhood, and which life’s inevitable hardships have only served to strengthen so that, today, she lives as limitless as ever.

Juli Anne’s parents were both brought to America from Europe as small children, and they grew up fully embracing the possibility of their new country. Nothing was taken for granted, and anything was possible. “They rejoiced in the potential and opportunities of life, and they breathed that into their children,” she recalls. “That excitement and belief in America and in life without limits is the common thread that has shaped every choice I’ve made. I had an exceptionally rich childhood that gave me a solid intellectual and emotional grounding, and which allowed me to launch at a young age, and that’s exactly what I did.”

Born and raised in rural Long Island, Juli Anne was the middle of three children. Her father, a scientist at the Brookhaven Laboratory on the Atomic Energy Commission research team, walked with the steely character that only the GI Joe generation could engender, and as his namesake, Juli Anne absorbed his strength of will. “The lab was a big part of our lives growing up,” she recalls. “It would throw family events and picnics, and that atmosphere really inspired in me a love of science and math.” Her mother, a homemaker for most of Juli Anne’s childhood, was a chairwoman for the League of Women Voters and contributed a civic influence to her daughter’s upbringing when she held young Juli Anne up on a stadium chair in an arena where John F. Kennedy was speaking.

Beyond the sciences, Juli Anne’s childhood was shaped by art and music, in which many members of her extensive family tree excelled. Her grandfather owned a beautiful summer home near the water, and she would join dozens of her cousins in running around and rejoicing in “the wonder of it all.” Spunky, strong-willed, insatiably curious, and tirelessly vibrant, she fished and climbed trees, seeing no reason why girls should behave any differently than boys—a blindness to culturally imposed gender limitations that she never grew out of. She was also her father’s shadow, accompanying him to the lab to watch him work on projects or into the city to see museums and matinees. She dreamed of one day becoming an astronaut, flying where she belonged—high above the earth and the artificial limits society so often imposes.

Amidst this charmed childhood, Juli Anne’s father didn’t feel his whiz kid daughter was being challenged enough in public school, so he sent her to the most rigorous parochial school he could find at that time. Academically, the sisters pressed their students to be all they could be, and Juli Anne thrived in that environment. “One of the nuns told me I was a social butterfly with a big brain, and that it was her job to make sure I used that brain and didn’t just flit about,” she laughs. “As a child, I had embraced the idea that learning was fun, and my teachers really encouraged me to continue that narrative. I had a ball with my classes—so much so that I finished high school within three years.”

By the summer she was 16, Juli Anne was selected to begin college studies in oceanography at Stony Brook University with hopes of transferring to Virginia Tech with her family after her father finished building a new family home in Blacksburg. All of that changed, however, when he collapsed one day near Thanksgiving when Juli Anne was 17. Years of radiation exposure had caused tumors to grow around his brainstem, and at the age of 49, he became permanently disabled and was never quite the same again.

The effect on his adoring daughter was equally profound. Five days after his diagnosis, she was in a serious car accident that totaled her 1968 Mustang and left her in and out of hospitals for months afterward, and while she was lucky to be alive, the trauma launched her into a rebellion against the cruel twists of fate that seemed to threaten all that mattered to her. Having lost some of her scholarship money for college, and with the dynamics of her family reeling from the vacuum left by its incapacitated patriarch, she dropped out of school. “Let’s just say the world flipped, and my orientation changed,” she remarks today. “I needed to escape the pain of what had happened to Dad, and I wanted to discover new things about life. I needed to show myself again that life has no limits.”

With that, Juli Anne went on a journey in both the spiritual and temporal sense, heading around the globe to live overseas and work at Citi Bank in Guam, where she enjoyed utilizing a platform that allowed her to flex her math muscles while processing loan applications.“This journey at such a young age connected me to the sense of possibility as I worked with people from the Philippines, Japan and Thailand,” she remembers. “I recommend all young people find a way to journey out to other lands before they settle into their formalized path in life.”

When she returned to the U.S., she decided to continue her studies and enrolled in East Carolina University. “I had learned by the time I got there that life happens,” she says. “A lot of life happens. I started to think about things pragmatically, and I realized that I especially loved the content of the Community and School Health Education degree program at their School of Allied Health and Social Professions. I thought I’d get a Master’s in Public Health Administration and do my piece of good work in the world through that.”

To pay for her education, Juli Anne fell back on a skill she developed in secret at the age of 15: waitressing. When her 16-year-old friend Karen got a job serving at IHOP, Juli Anne had been eager to follow suit, but her parents had told her to instead focus on academics and family. With that, she took the job in secret, only to be discovered when an uncle came into the restaurant. She was obliged to resign, but she came to think of waitressing as a fun mental game that she eagerly picked back up to earn money while working toward her degree.

Charles Callis, the assistant manager of the family restaurant where she worked, didn’t know what to make of the brash waitress who wouldn’t use a pad and pencil to write down orders as he instructed. Instead, she’d whisk around the room, taking as many orders as she could fit in her brain at once before dumping them at the counter. He couldn’t deny that she worked the floor faster, made more money, and impressed the customers better than any of his other servers, nor could he deny the power and pull of her spirit. It wasn’t long before the two were married, and that’s when Juli Anne got serious about growing up.

Upon earning her degree, she landed a job as Director of Aging Services for Greene and Lenior Counties in North Carolina because she achieved the distinction of Outstanding Woman for the School of Allied Health and Social Professions and was subsequently named Outstanding Young Woman of America. As the Director of Aging Services she set up and directed Meals on Wheels, in-home care, and other social programs for over 1,000 seniors throughout the rural, needy region. Passionate about health and wellness, she found the job to be among the most fulfilling positions of her life, as it allowed her to help people embrace a fuller life and a better future, just as she and Charles were doing. They bought a house in Greenville and had a son, Adam, followed closely by their daughter, Lisa Anne. Both pregnancies were fraught with medical hazards, with Juli Anne herself facing a brush with death during Adam’s birth and Lisa Anne a 26-week gestation baby requiring extensive treatment in the neonatal intensive care unit. But the spirit of the growing Callis family couldn’t be broken, and though their children were little, Charles encouraged Juli Anne to continue her education. “He really gave me wings,” she remembers. “He said I had the brain and the talent to do it, so I needed to. We’ve always had each other’s backs like that and been incredibly supportive of each other through everything.”

They hardly had time to sink into the rhythms of life, however, before Juli Anne’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. Juli Anne was allowed a year-long leave of absence to return to New York and stay by her mother’s side as she fought for her life. When that year was up and it was clear the fight was far from over, Charles left his family’s grocery store and farm businesses to join his wife and kids in New York. Looking to turn the prolonged hiatus into a productive experience, Juli Anne began selling some real estate, enrolled in graduate school, and then began working for CitiBank again. “I had no intention to go into banking,” she remarks. “But I ended up in marketing and marketing segmentation for those three years, until my mother finally recovered enough that we could return to Murfreesboro, North Carolina and pick back up the life we’d left behind.”

Finally back home in North Carolina and looking for something meaningful to do with her time, Juli Anne spoke with a headhunter, who found her a job in Norfolk for the U.S. Navy. It was 1983, and the military was downsizing, turning nonessential jobs into civilian billets. A man by the name of Admiral Wilson was running the Navy resale system for the entire globe, utilizing a big business model to create a field support office by dividing the world into seven regions, each with a civilianized billet with its own specialty. Equipped with the consumer research, market segmentation, and statistical modeling experience she had picked up at CitiBank, Juli Anne was hired as the Executive Director of Sales Coordination for the Mid-Atlantic Region of the U.S. Navy, which covered Iceland, Bermuda, Europe, and the Mid-Atlantic States. In that capacity, she was responsible for over $500 million in annual sales and personnel operations, and was instrumental in introducing McDonalds into Naval Hospitals and Ship Stores afloat. While at the Navy, Juli Anne was also the recipient of the Superior Accomplishment Recognition Award, the highest honor a civilian can earn from the Navy.  She was living life true to her spirit, without limits and with great plans for the future.

“But while man plans his path, God directs his steps,” she avows now, reflecting back on what happened next. Juli Anne was traveling for work as she often did, and Charles was on his family’s farm with the children, when Adam suddenly lay down and could not be resuscitated. At the age of ten, he suffered sudden death from an undiagnosed genetic cardiac disorder, marking the single most transformative event of his parents’ lives. “The truth is that the rubber met the road, and through that first year after Adam left, I really had to determine if I wanted to stay on this planet or not,” Juli Anne remembers. “One of the most tangible mementos we have of him is an audio recording of his voice from when he was dressed up as a shepherd. On the tape, he says, ‘And I will live in the house of the Lord for ever and ever.’ I know that’s where he is now, and I find that divinely comforting.”

As it had done when her father fell to the ground so many years earlier, life folded in on itself and called into question the deep faith and tireless spirit that formed its very roots, but Juli Anne reflected back on what she had learned since then. “My father lived through that, and he and my mother actually embraced a very full life afterward,” she remembers. “My mother became an RN in her forties because the experience had engendered in her a desire to change the world for the better. And as soon as my father could walk again, he began working with the VA to help others. There was no sitting down or holding back—as long as they could breathe, they were helping others. They really showed me that, when something strikes, you rebound and go forward, and life becomes good again. Charles and I would both walk forward in life, but not without embracing tremendous transformations inspired not only by our son’s departure, but also by the wonder of his presence while we had it.”

With that, the family that had once been country club Christians began a pursuit of genuine meaning—and they didn’t waste a moment. As they left the gravesite of their son after the funeral, Charles told his grieving wife that they were going to do something meaningful with their lives. He left the family businesses and enrolled in Wake Forest Seminary—among the most freeing and fulfilling moves of their lives—and Juli Anne left the Navy to spend more time with their daughter. When Charles graduated several years later, he was taken on as a minister in one of the biggest Baptist Churches in Virginia Beach, and the couple embraced the opportunity. At the same time, Juli Anne was put in contact with Jean Yokum at Langley Federal Credit Union, who had just created a VP of Marketing position and was looking for an innovative mind to fill the spot.

Juli Anne, who hadn’t even known what a credit union was and had certainly never intended to work for one, went into the meeting wary of how one might balance faith with business, and couldn’t have been given a better example. From humble roots in West Virginia, Jean was now a successful CEO and a fifth grade Sunday school teacher with strong faith and an open heart. Juli Anne took the job and spent the next four years learning, growing, and soaring—most literally when she was given a civil leadership award that included a back seat ride in an F15 Eagle at Langley as thanks for her work to gather and send personal supplies and cards to the troops in the first Desert Storm. When the troops were suddenly mobilized via the air force base, Juli Anne had instinctively jumped into action, working with radio and other media contacts to raise awareness and collect personal care items for the brave service members. “That ride was one moment in life that so far surpassed my wildest dreams,” she recalls. “We flew over the Chesapeake Bay, rolling the aircraft. It was incredible.”

Juli Anne was given more conventional but no less impressive recognition of her work as well, particularly when she won the Bank Marketing Association’s Best of Show award over competing companies like Chase and CitiBank. “I had really hit my stride,” she remembers. “I was excelling at my work, and with Charles pastoring at a church, everyone knew and loved us. We were going along merrily, and Charles had taken his first pastor in Virginia, serving there for 14 months when he suddenly collapsed in a Gloucester, Virginia parsonage at age 43 and was diagnosed with the same cardio myopathy that had taken Adam’s life.”

Thankful for Charles’s life but concerned that the condition was expected to kill him within three years, the Callis family wasted no time and relocated to Stanford, California, per the best medical recommendation. There, he was placed on a heart transplant waiting list and program via California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. “We waited over two years, counting each day as a blessing and possibly the last day of his life,” Juli Anne recalls. “In the early hours of the morning on August 15, 1998, we finally got the call, and four hours later, he was being prepped to have his heart removed as we received the miracle of a heart donation by the family of a young man who had died tragically in a Colorado climbing accident.”

The operation went well, but the heart rejected multiple times, and all stops were pulled out by the doctors. They used rescue measures to save Charles’s life, including Total Lymphatic Irradiation, massive infusions of test drugs, and ongoing protocols, some of which were not yet approved by the FDA. “Our medical team are the real heroes that God worked through over a post-transplant battle that lasted over a year,” Juli Anne says. In the end, Charles rebuilt his strength, and the doors opened for him to return to full-time ministry. With that, he took on the challenge as Senior Pastor of a church in inner city San Jose.

Juli Anne was hired as the first VP of Emerging Technologies and Business Development at the American Electronics Association Credit Union, where she was immersed in the cutting edge frontier of the internet and set up one of the first platforms for accepting mortgage applications over the web. “No one thought it would work, but we did it with CGI scripting, and it started to catch on like wildfire,” she recalls. The company exploded from about $320 million to $860 million during the ten years she was there, and Juli Anne was honored with a distinguished Woman in Industry Award, recognizing the success of the top 50 women in Silicon Valley. Life was good again, and the Callis family had regained its strength, ready to face whatever might come their way next.

That’s when the same genetic disorder struck Lisa Anne, who, at the age of 28, was already married with two children and working as a bio scientist at St. Jude Hospital near Virginia Beach. She had worked in clinical studies at Stanford and at LifeNet managing a research lab, and at the time the disorder struck, she was working on teams putting cardio devices in patients much like the one her father had prior to his transplant, and much like the one she now needed herself. Her first defibrillator had to be extracted, causing damage to her heart that meant she had to get an experimental external defibrillator instead. Thankfully, Lisa Anne is now doing well in San Diego, working with new surgical products for Stryker. “I’m amazed at her resiliency and her faith,” Juli Anne avows. “She was the premie baby we were told to abort. She fought for her life from the moment she arrived on Earth. Even when she was nine years old and watched her brother stop playing and lay down beside her to go to Heaven, she kept her faith. She’s our little miracle baby, and the reality is that my life is shaped by two walking miracles, and by a third person who’s now in eternity,” she says, of Charles, Lisa Anne, and Adam. “Because of them, every moment matters, and every decision is made with them in mind.”

That’s why Charles and Juli Anne decided to make the move back to the East Coast to be near their daughter, and with the help of a headhunter, Juli Anne was put in touch with the National Institutes of Health Federal Credit Union. The Credit Union was seventy years old, had a $2 million loss in 2008, and was looking for the kind of transformational leadership and limitless vision that Juli Anne had become known for. “That was just as the Obama administration’s banking reforms were taking place, shaping the destiny of every financial institution,” she remembers. Under her leadership as President and CEO, the credit union rebuilt its infrastructure with a focus on strong technologies and sound services, growing from $380 million to $580 million during her tenure from 2009 to 2013.

“I don’t know exactly what the next chapter will be, but I want to give my time and talent—both vocationally and non-vocationally—to things that matter,” she says today. “My work at GW is leading a global initiative in compassionate care, and I’m also thrilled to be working with Johns Hopkins University graduate students in a new degree program for bio tech and entrepreneurship. There are so many doors opening up to help nurture the efforts of bright young minds, as well as budding initiatives as a consultant.” This next chapter may begin at the George Washington Institute of Health and Spirituality, where Juli Anne serves on the board and has been asked to take on the role of chairwoman. As such, her passion and focus is now engrossed in meeting with global health leaders, building a sustainable business model for the organization, and exploring avenues to bring compassion back into healthcare. “I don’t know what adventure I’m on, but I have a very strong sense that something’s happening here,” she says.

This unrelenting, brave openness characterizes the advice she gives to young people entering the working world today. “Embrace the opportunities in life,” she urges, echoing the refrain of her childhood. “Just go for it. When you’re going through hell, keep going. Run for it. Just run full throttle. And through all that, remember that the most valuable thing to attain in life is contentment. Don’t miss a moment. Treasure the lessons from your parents and the butterfly kisses from your children. Play more and worry less—that’s the way to live a full, meaningful, limitless life.”