Jennifer Ballinger
Tribal Relations Specialist
US Forest Service
A lifelong Great Laker, Jen Saagajiwe-Gaabawiik Ballinger, grew up near Detroit, Michigan and now lives just outside the Twin Cities. She is a direct descendant of the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe and belongs to the bear clan. Her cross-cultural communication exposure began with her family by being the third oldest child out four for a dad being the youngest of seven and the oldest for her mom being the fifth of ten who provided a wide array of racial, cultural, religious, and socioeconomic background among her relatives.
Jen Ballinger currently serves as the Tribal Relations Specialist for the USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station and Forest Products Laboratory. In this role, she works to enhance connections between Tribes, Indigenous communities, and Forest Service researchers to facilitate information exchanges in culturally relevant and respectful ways. Her previous roles included working as an Environmental Scientist on contract to NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management and as an Outreach Specialist at the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission. She holds a Master of Public Health in Public Health Administration and Policy from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health as well as a BS in Biology and BA in American Indian Studies from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities.
Jen has over a decade of experience of working on a wide variety of natural resource management and research topics, including developing and implementing best practices for cross cultural resource stewardship, environmental health equity, and tribal collaboration. Her areas of technical expertise include documentation of Indigenous Knowledge and implementation into best management practices and research design, qualitative research methodology, program evaluation, and health impact assessments. Her graduate research focused on environmental policy impacts on American Indian health disparities in the Great Lakes region.
When not at work, Jen likes to spend her downtime with her husband Wesley and daughter Yara canoeing, hiking, quilting, and running a micro-sugarbush in her backyard.