Miranda Ballentine, now volunteering as an advisor for the EIS Council, is a senior executive with a history of success in c-suite-level leadership roles requiring adaptability and strategic decision-making to balance competing priorities.
Ms. Ballentine has a proven track record of intra-preneurship in the corporate, non-profit, and government sectors, and across multiple fields, including energy, sustainability, construction and facilities, finance, and retail. Ms. Ballentine brings two decades’ experience leading high-performing, global and community-based teams, both vertically and in matrixed environments. She is skilled at both seeing the big picture and diving into details, balancing analytics with business intuition. As a leader who cares, empowers, and builds people and teams, she brings an ability to identify relationships between programs and organizations to breakdown silos and build collaborative partnerships. She has proven excellence in influencing global teams with no direct reporting authority, successfully building consensus among peers, superiors, and direct reports with collegiality and cultural sensitivity. Ms. Ballentine is also a passionate and articulate public speaker, with experience across: media, conferences, motivational talks, and classrooms.
Most recently appointed by President Obama to be the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Installations, Environment, and Energy), a 4-star civilian equivalent position, Ms. Ballentine was an integral member of the Air Force’s top executive team, alongside the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force’s 4-star Generals. She was responsible for the oversight, formulation, and execution of plans, policies, programs, and budgets for: 170 Air Force installations; a $9 billion annual energy budget; a $4.5 billion annual construction budget; environmental conservation, restoration & compliance programs for nine million acres of land, 200 miles of coast line, 600,000 acres of forestland, and 270,000 acres of wetlands; safety & occupational health for 660,000 employees; and program execution by 50,000 engineers around the world. Under her leadership, the Air Force scaled energy resiliency and created a new Office of Energy Assurance, to make mission-assurance a central tenant of every energy project. She launched the Resilient Energy Demonstration Initiative (REDI), which developed and oversaw designs for smart, cyber-secure microgrids, including a “Future Forward Operating Base.” She provided war-fighting Commanders, for the first time, with visibility to strategic risk-to-mission from kinetic and cyber-attacks to the power grid, Air Force energy assets, and industrial control systems, and she oversaw energy policies for the nation’s largest fleet of aircraft, facilitating efficiencies worth $1.2 Billion in savings. Ms. Ballentine garnered the trust and respect of top Air Force Generals and was awarded the Pentagon’s top citation for civilian leadership.
Prior to the Air Force, Ms. Ballentine served as the Director of Sustainability for Global Renewable Energy & Sustainable Facilities at Walmart Stores, Inc. In this role, she led a team of 60+ colleagues from fifteen countries to develop strategies toward Walmart’s goal to be supplied by 100% renewable energy. These programs identified over $1 billion in potential annual energy savings and 9 million metric ton of avoided GHG potential. Ms. Ballentine served as a relationship architect, successfully building dozens of NGO partnerships to minimize negative public-facing campaigns and capitalize on NGOs expertise.
Prior to the Air Force and Walmart, Ms. Ballentine was the Vice President of Investor Analysis and Chief Operating Officer at David Gardiner & Associates where she informed multi-million-dollar investment decisions by analyzing companies’ off-balance sheet risks and opportunities. She has provided climate change, environmental, and sustainability strategies to Fortune 500 corporations, institutional investors, socially responsible investors, and environmental groups.
Ms. Ballentine holds a Bachelors of Science in Neuro-Psychology from Colorado State University, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude, and a Masters of Business Administration from George Washington University, where she finished in the top 5% of her class.
Awards and Decorations:
- Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service to the United States Air Force (Air Force’s highest civilian award)
- Decoration for Distinguished Civilian Service to the United States Army
- World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders program (one of 200 selectees from 70 countries out of thousands of nominees)
- Selected for Walmart’s Corporate Affairs Key Leader’s Program, Leadership Academy, Global Leadership Institute, and The Walton Institute
- Best MBA Paper in Corporate Citizenship by Boston College and Net-Impact
Memberships and Affiliations (Current and Previous):
- Advisory Board Member — the Electric Infrastructure Security Council (present)
- Nominee — Board of Directors, National Wildlife Federation
- Co-chair of renewable energy committee of World Economic Forum’s Global Growth Action Alliance (2012 to 2014)
- Member — World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on New Energy Infrastructure (2013 to 2014)
- Chair — The Sustainability Consortium’s External Relations Committee (2009 to 2014)
- Member — NetImpact Corporate Advisory Council (2010 to 2014).