TRUE Africa provides educational and humanitarian sponsorships to orphans and other vulnerable children. “We operate entirely on volunteer efforts, enabling 95 percent of every dollar donated to go toward program services,” Hite says.
“We work with volunteers here, including BYU interns, students, Eagle Scouts, families, school and church groups, donors, sponsors, et cetera, to raise funds for program services. It’s extremely fulfilling because we—sponsors, donors, and volunteers—all know we are genuinely making a difference.”
Julie Melville Hite crosses lines—in positive ways. One critical boundary is the unique way in which she and her husband, Steven, embrace “responsibilities rather than roles,” Hite says. This philosophy has given them the needed flexibility for balancing their family and careers.
“I’ve been entrepreneurial since way back,” Hite says. After her BYU graduation in 1980, she created a typing business while Steven completed his master’s degree at BYU. With two young children in tow, they moved to Boston in 1982 for Steven’s doctoral studies at Harvard. “I added the cutting-edge service of word processing to my typing business. Almost no one had computers yet,” Hite says. “With Steve as my employee, we began selling and setting up computers in people’s homes, and I provided corporate software training.” When Hite created this entrepreneurial path, she became a very early computer adopter and one of only a few WordPerfect-certified instructors in the Boston area.
After eight years, three more children, and a move to Arizona, Hite was accepted into the MBA program at Arizona State University. However, her life took a different direction when her husband accepted a job offer as a BYU faculty member. In Provo, Hite began another entrepreneurial venture to publish and distribute a book. Then when Steven brought home a brochure about BYU Marriott’s master of organizational behavior program, which has since been discontinued, Hite decided to apply. She negotiated a part-time path to completing her degree in 1995, crossing the line between two cohorts.
Hite then capitalized on her multitasking mother-and-scholar momentum and pursued a doctoral degree in strategic management at the University of Utah. With her focus on new business creation, a relatively new research field at the time, one could say she was an entrepreneur in entrepreneurship. “My strategy professors didn’t care for the term entrepreneurial firms, as entrepreneurship was seen as a stepchild to strategy back then,” Hite says. “So I used the term emerging firms to legitimize my research in entrepreneurship. After I graduated in 1999, everyone wanted to start an entrepreneurship program.” Hite accepted a visiting professorship at the University of Utah for that purpose.
In 2000 Hite returned to BYU as a professor of strategic organizational leadership in the BYU Department of Educational Leadership and Foundations. She crossed academic boundaries in her application of strategic leadership to education. For example, the No Child Left Behind initiative altered the organizational strategies, structures, and cultures of schools. Hite was well positioned to prepare school administrators for this new path because of her unique experience studying organizational behavior, social networks, and strategic management.
Hite and her husband were one of only a few faculty couples working in the same department at BYU. They jointly researched and published in academic education journals and were both Fulbright Senior Research Scholars in Delhi, India. They also led joint field research in international education in Uganda over several years, taking more than 120 students as research assistants.
In 2006 the couple cofounded the Orem-based nonprofit charity TRUE Africa to improve educational opportunities for vulnerable Ugandan children. Hite serves as vice president of finance and operations. “With Steve’s expertise in international education development and my expertise in strategy and entrepreneurship, combined with our Ugandan experience and educational networks, it became clear that together we were uniquely positioned to make a difference there,” she says.
