Julianna Yu is an Emergency Physician Turned Global Benefits Medical Director at Amazon

The odds of Dr. Julianna Yu meeting another professional in her space with a resume similar to hers are close to nil. Yu, global benefits medical director at Amazon, spent twenty years as an emergency medicine physician and health systems leader in hospitals in Northern California and Seattle. The punchline here is that coming to Amazon wasn’t even her first serious pivot. She earned her undergrad at Northwestern in biomedical engineering prior to realizing that she wanted to pursue a career in clinical medicine.

“I’ve had the benefit of having a career that has been dynamic and unconventional,” Yu summarizes. “I’ve been told that my path is very rare, and it’s just been fortuitous that I’ve been able to put my skill sets to use in different settings.”

As an emergency physician, Yu relishes the opportunity to provide critical healthcare to patients of all backgrounds while also serving as a safety net for her community. She’s deeply connected to the real-world challenges her patients experience on a daily basis, all the while developing leadership skills that, today, she considers transformational leadership.

It’s easy to tell why Yu is so effective in the emergency room. She’s calm but present. Steady and unwavering. It’s easy to imagine her remaining so in an environment that is anything but. But what would push a veteran of the ER into a leadership position at Amazon?

The physician earned a reputation for striving for high-quality, patient-focused care and outcomes and process improvement, maybe a tribute to her engineering background. By leading diverse teams of healthcare providers in emergency departments and transfer centers with emerging virtual care technologies she began to find ways of making a different kind of impact, shifting from one-on-one clinical care to optimizing entire systems. Yu says this transition was augmented by supportive mentors and opportunities to manage broader operations across healthcare systems.

And then came COVID. Seattle, the initial epicenter in the US, was a life-changing time just as much for Yu as it was for the rest of the world. Despite experiencing daily uncertainties and health risks, Yu continued to work at the bedside in the ED throughout the pandemic.  One of the ways that Yu coped with the stressors of the hospital environment was volunteering at the Amazon Meeting Center in 2021, where she was part of team that vaccinated thousands of Seattle residents in a day.

“I remember being so impressed by Amazon’s efficient logistics management,” Yu recalls. “So when an opportunity came up a year later to lead a new healthcare innovation team, it really seemed like an ideal mix of all of my interests: the opportunity to apply my decades of bedside experience, digital health, process improvement, and global health.”

Yu stepped into the role with a mandate to elevate clinical excellence and create standards across Amazon’s myriad employee health programs and leverage data-driven strategies and technology to improve health outcomes for an enormous, diverse workforce.

Amazon’s ethos of “customer obsession” resonates with Yu’s own focus on the employee experience. Yu says she designs programs that meet clinical standards, but are digitally accessible, personalized, and relevant for employees and their families. The AtoZ app, a central hub for employee benefits, tools for communication, and accessing work-related information, exemplifies this drive and innovation.

Yu has played a leadership role in expanding family-building support, including fertility, and pregnancy care with virtual doula support programs. She also led the launch of cardiometabolic condition management, expert medical opinions for complex conditions, and virtual physical therapy. 

Channeling that transformational spirit, Yu believes in setting high standards while empowering teams to reach beyond their perceived limits. She applies systematic thinking from her engineering days to turn complex health challenges into structured, achievable goals for both clinical and non-clinical stakeholders.

And Yu’s caregiving days are anything but behind her. The doctor spends her weekends practicing emergency medicine.

“Maintaining a clinical practice invigorates me, keeps me close to patient care, while also keeping my skills sharp,” Yu explains. “Providing patient care in the emergency department and seeing the impact I have on individual patients reminds me why I chose to become a physician.  When we’re discussing healthcare delivery during the week with my teams, I’m speaking from actual experience. It’s a privilege to be able to convey what patients and physicians experience at the bedside to inform our benefits design. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that it’s rare for a company to seek out a physician for this role, and I’m very grateful for this opportunity.”

But that cuts both ways. Yu has been able to bring enthusiasm and passion for quality assurance and process improvement to Amazon. That’s no small feat. But for her, it’s about creating a compelling narrative that the rest of her team can rally around.

“I’m working with clinicians, program managers, software developers, and product teams,” Yu explains. “To be an effective leader, it’s critical   to inspire others, achieve alignment from different perspectives, and create a shared passion to around creating programs that serve our employees.   I think my nontraditional background serves me well there.”

Yu says driving alignment behind that passion is also critical. For her, helping teams understand the “why” behind the “what” is vital to ensuring that alignment. It creates meaning and understanding.

For physicians in a healthcare setting considering a change of scenery, Yu has great advice.

“I’ve had a lot of people reach out asking about how I successfully managed a significant career change and had the courage to try something new,” Yu says. “My advice for my fellow physicians is not to underestimate the leadership skills we have outside of our clinical skills, such as leading diverse healthcare teams, critical thinking, communication, collaboration and empathy. These leadership qualities that physicians possess are transferable to other industries. I always encourage the people I mentor to push themselves to not be afraid to take on challenges outside of clinical practice to realize their full potential. That may not fit perfectly in one role or industry, and I think that’s okay. Don’t underestimate what you can bring to an organization.”