A condensed matter physicist, Judy Franz was the Executive Officer of the American Physical Society (APS) from 1994 to 2009. APS is the largest professional society for physicists. Prior to her appointment at APS, she had been a professor of physics at Indiana University, West Virginia University and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. She was also a visiting professor of physics at Cornell University and the Technical University in Munich, Germany. In addition to her APS position, Judy was the Secretary General of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, whose members are the physics communities in approximate 60 countries throughout the world. Judy has served on the Boards of the American Institute of Physics, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the American Association for Women in Science (AWIS), and is a past president of the American Association of Physics Teachers. She has served on numerous national committees, including ones for NSF, ONRL, the Department of Energy Office of Science, the State Department, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. She received a BA in physics from Cornell University and her PhD in physics from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. She is a fellow of APS, AAAS and AWIS.