Jeanna Ballard

Jeanna Ballard, MPA, Senior Research Specialist has a varied background in strategic and comprehensive planning, technical assistance, and performance improvement studies. She has helped facilitate strategic planning workshops, focus groups, interviews, organizational design reviews, leadership development seminars, and compensation analyses. Jeanna has co-facilitated strategic planning for elected officials, nonprofits, municipalities, counties, townships, park districts, libraries, council of governments, and institutes of higher education. For the past two years, Jeanna has provided staff support for funded projects for the Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network (ICAHN). Most recently, she has worked on local government strategic planning initiatives. These projects included coordinating online surveys, community focus groups, goal development sessions, identifying potential challenges and solutions, and distilling themes from a variety of quantitative and qualitative information to share with key stakeholders.

Jeanna holds a dual MPA degree via her joint studies at Northern Illinois University and Renmin University of China in Beijing. She joined the Center for Governmental Studies in 2017 and serves as an elected Representative on NIU’s Supportive Professional Staff Council and is the Chair of the Advocacy Committee. Jeanna has seven years of public service experience serving in local, county, and federal levels of government and is a former Banovetz Fellow. Jeanna has also been a speaker for several Civic Leadership Academy (CLA) classes and taught courses at NIU in public service leadership and management.