Millikin, 1997
• 1996 Academic All-America® First Team
• 1997 Academic All-America® First Team
Julie Roe Lach was inducted into the CoSIDA Academic All-America® Hall of Fame in 2009.
Since finishing her collegiate basketball playing career, Julie Roe Lach made a career in college athletics serving in executive director roles with the NCAA and at the conference level. Roe also made a successful career in the private sector and founded her own consulting company.
Roe Lach is a former All-America women’s basketball player at Millikin University, where she is a trustee emeritus after serving on the Board from 2001 – 2010. She obtained her Juris Doctor from the Indiana University McKinney School of Law and an honorary doctorate from Millikin University in 2012.
She has been involved with college athletics for 20 years and continues that involvement as President of her own company, JRL Consulting, LLC. She worked at the NCAA for over 15 years, most recently serving as the vice president of enforcement from October 2010 to February 2013. In 2014, Roe Lach joined the Horizon League as Deputy Commissioner.
At the Horizon League, Roe Lach oversees the implementation of the Horizon League’s strategic plan. Additionally, she handles the day-to-day operations within the league office while supervising regular season and championship competition, messaging, governance, student-athlete well-being, corporate sponsorships, and resource allocation.
As President of JRL Consulting, Roe Lach focuses on placement advising and contract negotiations for clients seeking executive level jobs, strategic planning with conferences, compliance education and advising for institutions and head coaches, and leadership development for female administrators. JRL Consulting Career Advancement offers clients an introspective and comprehensive toolkit for evaluating their current professional outlook, and to further prepare for future opportunities.
Prior to founding JRL Consulting, Roe Lach spent nearly 16 years at the NCAA, working her way from an intern to Vice President of Enforcement. As vice president, Roe Lach restructured a department of 55 staff members after meeting with over 150 constituents to help identify key issues facing the national governing body. She created a unit focused on football, women’s basketball and expanded the men’s basketball group with the charge to generate cases in those sports. Within a year, over 25 percent of the department’s active cases were generated from the staff’s work.
Under her leadership, the department implemented business performance metrics and within two years shaved months from the average investigation time. Roe Lach also formed the department’s first quality control program which included a director position, review board charged with vetting all allegations, a mock-hearing program and a qualitative approach to measuring quality of investigations based on fairness, thoroughness and communication with involved parties.
Roe Lach was also the staff lead for the presidential group that proposed the overhauled penalty structure and process for adjudicating cases which was adopted by the membership in November 2012.
During her time at the NCAA, Roe Lach attended over 100 major infractions hearings. Prior to being named vice president, she was the supervising director in over 20 completed cases. Before moving to enforcement, Roe Lach oversaw the student-athlete reinstatement division.
She also served as a member of the Parish Council for St. Mary’s Catholic Church and is past president of the parish’s St. Vincent de Paul conference. Roe Lach also serves on the Board of Directors for the Alliance of Women’s Coaches, a national non-profit organization founded to recruit and retain women coaches.