Batchelor honored as Davis Chamber of Commerce 2026 Athena Award recipient

The Davis Chamber of Commerce Women in Business Committee has selected Julie Batchelor as the recipient of the 2026 Athena Leadership Award. The award is given to women who contribute service to the community, demonstrate professional excellence and assist other women to achieve their leadership potential. 

“I was very surprised and very honored, and I even cried,” said Batchelor. “Since I started, Women in Business has been one of my passions in the chamber itself. So when I spent those years doing it, I sat on the Athena selection committee for maybe 15 years, honoring the great women in our community.” 

Batchelor said when they honored her, it took her breath away. “These are the Athena principles that I love so much.”

Currently, Batchelor works as an independent contractor in the advertising and marketing industry. She has also had positions at Franklin Covey, Iomega Corp. and Sysco International Foods.

“All during that time, my family ran a restaurant in Ogden,” she said. “We closed the restaurant in 2003. In 2004, I started selling direct advertising with Hometown Values magazine. One of the first things I did was to start attending the chamber Women in Business meetings. I got super-involved in that. I love Women in Business.”

Batchelor said she started to sit on some of the boards. “I was the Women in Business chair in 2010, so I was on the committee for five years before I was chair. I love networking at the chamber too, so I go to the networking meetings.”

In 2011, Batchelor started her business, Batchelor Management. “I’ve had that for a long time,” she said. “It allows me to work with lots of different companies and what I started to do in 2011 was finding the best fit for my clients.”

In the early 2000s, Batchelor said, she would work with clients that needed a logo. “I’d say I need a high-resolution logo and they’d say, ‘I think my business card guy has a copy of that.’ At one point, I was like, ‘Why do they need a business card guy? Why do they need four different sales reps if I can help them?’”

Their advertising would be one rep to connect them to all the different areas they wanted to do, she said. “That includes Hometown, Value Pages, Val Pack and postcards. I’ve done that through many different companies. I also got a wholesale account doing business cards so they didn’t have to have a business card guy anymore.”

Batchelor is a lifelong Davis County resident and graduated from Layton High School and Weber State University.

“I still live in my childhood neighborhood,” said Batchelor. “My parents live up the street.”

In addition to her work with the chamber, Batchelor serves as a RAMP commissioner for Layton City. She will join the Davis Chamber Executive Board
in 2026.

Sports were an important part of Batchelor’s growing-up years and she took that love into adulthood, coaching youth sports.

“My family grew up playing ball,” she said. “All of us. My brother became the head football coach at Layton High. My daughter grew up and played a lot of softball. My oldest niece is 34 now and we started coaching just even in the recreation world when she was 8.”

As her daughter Gracie was growing up, Batchelor and her husband coached her in Junior Jazz and basketball. “I even coached my little nephew in soccer,” she said. “But he’s not little anymore — he’s 25. We coached a lot over the years and we loved it. I want girls to love ball as much as I do and I hope while they do it they’ll learn the fundamentals. That’s our coaching style. It ended up being about 24 years of coaching.”

Batchelor’s experience in her parents’ restaurant showed her how important advertising was. “I knew how successful it could be and how it could help business and especially small business,” she said. “Direct mail has gone up but it hasn’t doubled and tripled and quadrupled. So I feel that you can find something in everyone’s budget. That’s what I love, too. I believe that people shouldn’t go broke advertising and I want to help them maintain their budget and get the biggest bang for their buck.”

Besides her business, Batchelor works to support the teen centers in the Davis School District. “I do have one passion — it’s the teen centers. I love to donate to them.”

It started with pantry packs at East Layton Elementary, where she was the PTO president. “That was a passion, and then when my Gracie went to Central Davis Junior High, they didn’t distribute pantry packs there at the time,” she said. “So we worked to get pantry packs there. I think just between education and knowing that kids can’t learn if they’re hungry, it just became a passion of mine.”

Batchelor will be honored Feb. 24 at the Davis Chamber Athena Award Luncheon at the Davis Conference Center. For more information about the Athena Award, visit https://www.athenainternational.org/leadership-award-events.