Before joining the US Navy, Brad played college sports: football at Morehead State University and rugby at Coastal Carolina University. He was in the US Navy from 2007-12 – stationed in Charleston, SC 2008-10 and in Fujairah, UAE in 2011. After the Navy, he completed his undergrad at Ohio State University (in Economics) and was in Cape Town, South Africa in 2013 for an economic development internship. Brad then moved to Silicon Valley for grad school at SJSU (in Economics) and lived there from 2013-19. Along the way, he completed an online master’s degree from the University of Illinois (in Computer Science). He previously worked for Picarro Inc. from 2015-23 as an engineer responsible for equipment sensitive to methane, helping utility companies (such as PG&E, CenterPoint, Italgas, Xcel, and others) to address their climate change impact. Brad currently works in Data Management at NOAA in Boulder, CO (https://psl.noaa.gov/people/bradley.ballard/)

Outside of work, Brad enjoys reading and traveling. He completed two four-month-long 20+ country trips around the world in 2012 (solo) and 2019 (with his wife), visiting 6 continents and 50+ countries/territories in total. The notebook for the 2012 trip is here (https://bradjballard.com/bbwt/) and for the 2019 trip is here (https://bradjballard.com/sbwt/)