Staff Spotlight - Lyndsey Ballinger

Lyndsey Ballinger is the Academic and Business Incubator Manager for East Oakland at BUILD Oakland. She joined BUILD in July 2007.

My career of service has traversed continents, coasts and jobs in an attempt to find an organization that serves youth in the amazing capacity that I’ve finally found working with BUILD.

In addition to doing four years of ROTC at the University of Maryland, College Park, I majored in Criminology and Criminal Justice with a minor in GIS and Remote Sensing. After my freshman year of college I took what I thought would be a simple summer job working as a general counselor with the Fresh Air Fund, a New York based organization. Spending the summer in the woods and offering under-resourced 9-12 year old boys from New York the opportunity to experience a traditional summer camp setting focused on conflict management and the environment was a life changing experience and shifted my career interests from serving my country to serving youth. I still focused on my military career and took my leadership and management training seriously as a cadet, and became an Aircraft Maintenance Officer because of the immediate leadership opportunities it offered.

After being commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force, I attended Maintenance Officer School in Texas, which was followed by my first home station assignment at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California. Working at Travis was an amazing opportunity to learn both logistics and personnel management practices in real time, and after a year of training I became the officer in charge of a deployment of 96 troops and nine KC-10 aircraft to United Arab Emirates.

I decided to transition from Active Duty to the reserves in order to find an opportunity to work with youth. During my job search, I found out about the Americorps*VISTA program and BUILD, and was intrigued at the idea of combining both the business and management practices I learned in the Air Force with the passion I have for working with students. It is with so much anticipation and excitement that I transition into the next school year as the Academic and Business Incubator Manager for East Oakland students. And it is my hope to pull from my various professional experiences and give the students the best BUILD experience I can.