Lynn Ballard
Parent
Like Elphaba Thropp from the musical Wicked, Lynn is not purely wicked but she can be at times, particularly when it comes to advocating for equity in our schools. Lynn enjoys riding a broom. She not only enjoys riding a broom, she keeps motors attached to hers and encourages other parents to do the same.
Lynn has over two decades of experience in higher education, nonprofit administration, and organizational, community and economic development. She is a graduate of the University of Akron and Auburn University, where she taught in the Political Science Department as a Presidential Fellow. A former consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development, Lynn has worked in urban and rural communities in the U.S. and Africa mainly on programs designed to expand educational and economic opportunities for minorities, low-income persons, women and youth. She was appointed by the National Park Service, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, to the Education and Interpretation Committee of the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site, a $100 million project under development in Macon County, Alabama. She edited the feasibility study submitted to Congress. She is most proud of her service on the Advisory Committee for the Tuskegee University National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care, which was established in partial response to President Clinton’s formal apology on May 16, 1997, for the federal government’s role in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
Lynn has lived in California since 2002. At Emery USD, she has been Director of Strategic Initiatives, founder of the Malcolm X Black Families Forum, a member of the Superintendent’s Parent Advisory Committee and a consultant on math and science initiatives. She has been instrumental in expanding opportunities for Emery students to take more rigorous courses. In 2005, Lynn successfully challenged Emery Secondary School, as well as prevailing assumptions about what ESS students are capable of achieving, by having her daughter and several of her 8th grade classmates enrolled in Geometry, which they took parallel to Algebra 1. Today, those students are taking AP Calculus BC in their senior year having completed AP Calculus AB in the 11th grade. From Lynn’s perspective, education equity is giving EVERY student an opportunity to achieve at their highest level, the focus of her work and advocacy at Emery.
Lynn is working on her first book which partially documents her journey at Emery and profiles some of the dedicated and often hilarious people she’s met in working towards social change.
