Julie Dixon’s background is in the advertising and marketing fields, where she specialized primarily in account management and copywriting for the sporting and packaged goods industries.

Ms. Dixon was Nike, Inc.’s first advertising manager. She then came over to the agency side in Los Angeles, where she worked on packaged goods accounts such as 3M, Abbott Laboratories, Syntex and Foster Farms. Eventually she moved to McCann-Erickson in San Francisco to work on the Levi Strauss & Co. account which included coordination of Levi’s Olympics sponsorship.  

In 1987, she co-founded Sports Incorporated, a product and marketing firm based in Portland, Oregon that created new brands such as VanGrack, and worked with existing brands such as Naturalizer, Columbia Sportswear and adidas. The company was purchased by adidas in 1993 and was rechristened adidas America. It became part of the public offering of adidas in 1996.

Today, Ms. Dixon has turned to writing as her primary occupation.  She is co-author of the nonfiction book Swoosh: A Story of Nike and the Men Who Played There (Harcourt Brace). Swoosh became a national bestseller as well as Number One in the Northwest.  Swoosh was released in paperback by HarperCollins and has gone through several printings, including those in Spanish, Russian and Japanese.

Ms. Dixon’s second book, The Littlest Logger, is a fiction story that revolves around a Northwest logger haunted by the legends of his past while faced with the realities of today's timber shortage. The Littlest Logger also appeared on the Northwest bestseller list.

Ms. Dixon also wrote and sold two screenplays which were purchased by a major studio.  Her work-in-progress is Sons of Beaches, a nonfiction book due for completion in late 2008.

Ms. Dixon holds a B.A in English from U.C.L.A. and a M.S. in Journalism from USC. She has been professor of writing at Portland State University as well as a guest lecturer at the University of Oregon. A past-president of Willamette Writers (the largest writer’s group in the Northwest), Ms. Dixon was also founding chairperson of the advisory board for Portland State University’s Center for Excellence in Writing, for which she received PSU’s 2000 President's Award for University Advancement.  She also served on PSU's Foundation Board for nine years. She Is past president of the Rob Strasser Foundation, and a past board member of the Kinship Foundation, The Executive Cabinet of the Oregon Health Sciences University Campaign for Women’s Health, The Northwest Academy, and Community of Writers. Ms. Dixon currently serves on the boards of the Oregon Sports Authority, Oregon Public Broadcasting, OHSU Circle of Giving for Women's Health, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.