Awards
- IU Indianapolis Spirit of Philanthropy Award - 2008
About Julian T. Peebles
Julian T. Peebles graduated from Cathedral High School in Indianapolis. Following his college career at Butler University, he returned to Cathedral as a teacher. Peebles then had a distinguished business career. He ran his own dairy company and became the largest independent distributor of dairy products in central Indiana. He later returned to Cathedral as President during a critical period in the school’s history. Under his entrepreneurial leadership, enrollments grew from 550 to 1,175 students, more than $20 million was raised to renovate and expand the campus, and the school was honored to be named a Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education. As the president of the school he also served on or led multiple school accreditation teams for high schools around the Midwest. He is currently the President of Cardinal Spellman High School in Boston, Massachusetts.
Peebles also served for 12 years as President and CEO of the Ruth Lilly Health Education Center, one of the leading health education centers in the United States. In this position, he was instrumental in procuring $6 million from the Lilly Endowment to fund the Health Education for the 21st Century project at the School of Informatics. A portion of this contribution enabled the School of Informatics and the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at IUPUI to create a health education learning laboratory for the Ruth Lilly Health Education Center that is revolutionary in its scope and impact as one of the most sophisticated technological academic workplaces in Indiana. Improvements included the digitization of all center programs, new interactive computer activities for students, the creation of innovative 3-D stereoscopic multimedia applications, and a plan for evaluating the effectiveness of the center's programming in central Indiana. The Ruth Lilly Health Education Center empowers students to make better and more informed decisions about their health and wellbeing.