Julia E. Klees is currently Associate Corporate Medical Director for BASF Corporation, the North American subsidiary of BASF SE, the world’s leading chemical company. Functional responsibilities include the design and management of the BASF Corporation medical programs including occupational health surveillance, medical emergency response, health promotion programs, and work re-entry from short term disability. She consults with her colleagues in Environmental Health and Safety regarding the relationship of health effects to toxicology and industrial hygiene. Julia contributes to the worldwide BASF Group Chemical Emergency Medical Guidelines, occupational medicine performance standards and audit programs.
Prior to joining BASF in 1995, Julia was a full-time faculty member of Jefferson Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University, in Philadelphia for four years, where she taught occupational medicine and internal medicine. She also had an active clinical and consulting practice. Before that, for two years, she was Medical Director of the Occupational Health Service at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia.
Julia earned her BA in premedical science from Lehigh University in 1982, a medical doctorate in 1984 from Hahnemann University in Philadelphia (now Drexel) and a master’s in public health in 1989 from the University of California at Berkeley. She completed a residency in internal medicine at the Mayo Clinic (Rochester MN) and a residency in occupational medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and is Board-Certified in both specialties. She is a Fellow of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) and is currently a member of the ACOEM Evidence-based Practice Committee and Council on Scientific Affairs. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and co-author of several peer-reviewed medical articles.
Julia is an active supporter of the Zoellner Arts Center at Lehigh. She has funded student instrumental education via the Klees Family Instrumental Ensemble Endowed Fund.