Julianna Strout, 38

Julianna Strout felt lost last year, soon after she had her first baby, a girl named Vivian. Like many others, she went to social media for some support in navigating a new mom's life. She quickly found a network — but also discovered that network craved something else: in-person connections. 

Strout, with a career full of independent, counterintuitive moves, decided to hold a spa day, at her house, to create that in-person network from scratch. The response was so overwhelming, she moved the event from her house to The Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota, where vendors and nonprofits came to network and mingle with moms and women business owners.

Photo by Mark Wemple

Strout, whose day job is director of client relations at Bradenton law firm McNary Powers, has kept on thinking big with her mom-connections event. It’s now called the SRQ Women’s Expo. There’s been three expos since last September, and more than 1,000 people attended the most recent one, in July. It included panels, a keynote speaker and more than 150 vendors. Strout, in an interview prior to the July event, says she seeks to put on similar events in Tampa, Fort Lauderdale and Orlando. “I think it’s the only place where women are not judged for asking for help,” says Strout. 

Helping others is a Strout career theme. That includes being named Miss Rhode Island in 2009 and competing in the Miss America contest; working for pharmaceutical firms and startups in Massachusetts; and running for city council in Boston. 

Strout moved to South Florida and in 2018 ran for and won a seat on the North Bay Village Commission in Miami-Dade County. In South Florida she also worked as chief of staff for a developer and started a nonprofit called Celebrity Soccer Match, which raised funds for children and young people with disabilities. She moved to the west coast of Florida in 2022. 

Strout’s career also hit a speed bump in 2022, in Miami, when she was charged with a federal crime for lying to get into a federal immigration detention center to see her then-fiance and now-husband, former Major League Baseball pitcher Brayan Villarreal. The center had temporarily suspended visitation due to Covid and Strout, authorities said, had lied and said she was a paralegal. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year of probation and 50 hours of community service. The incident drew significant media coverage and Strout, in talking about the arrest in July, says she regrets her actions — though she also believes the U.S. Justice Department was a bit overzealous in pursuing the case. 

Looking forward, Strout is excited about the opportunities with the women’s expo. In going through the challenges that led to the expo in the first place, Strout leans on her mentor, fellow mom and entrepreneur Libby McNary, who has run her own law firm for more than a decade. “She has taught me valuable lessons about time management, setting boundaries and leading with empathy,” Strout says.