Julie M. Williams

Senior Vice President/Continuous Improvement and Optimization

Julie Williams is Senior Vice President/Continuous Improvement and Optimization of Southwest Gas Corporation. She is responsible for driving long-term positive change throughout the organization and accelerating the Company’s pursuit of excellence. Julie partners with executive stakeholders to develop and execute strategy for continuous improvement in safety, quality, customer service, operational performance and cost management.

Julie is passionate about growing people and building a culture of continuous improvement where employees are empowered to advance operational excellence through innovation.

Julie most recently served as the Senior Vice President/Chief Operating Officer where she led the five operating areas serving over 2.2 million customers in Nevada, Arizona and California, along with the centralized operations support and engineering, metrics and benchmarking, customer contact center and billing. Julie has played an instrumental role in advancing public safety, quality, the customer experience, integrity management, and field leadership development. 

Julie joined Southwest in 1997 and held various engineering and operations management roles. She was appointed Vice President/Northern Nevada Division in 2010, Vice President/Southern Arizona Division in 2014, Chief Operating Officer in 2022 and Senior Vice President/Continuous Improvement and Optimization in 2023. Julie has provided valuable leadership on multiple transformational projects that delivered growth, reliability and sustainably throughout her career.

An alumnus of Arizona State University, Julie holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering and an Executive Master of Business Administration. Julie serves as the Board of Directors Treasurer for the Western Energy Institute, participates in the American Gas Association Operations Managing Committee and serves on the Board of Directors for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Southern Nevada.

Outside of work, Julie enjoys traveling, hiking and spending time with her husband Kaz and 10-year-old son Tomo.