Linda Bales, Director, United Methodist Church Louise and Hugh Moore Population Project

By Evelyn Garland, Student Outreach Coordinator
Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH)

Profile

Linda lived in the Dayton, Ohio region all her life before coming to Washington in 2001 – 5 days after September 11th. She directs the Louise and Hugh Moore Population Project for the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, an advocacy project focusing primarily on women and children’s issues namely HIV & AIDS, family planning, domestic violence, human sexuality, human trafficking and the empowerment of women and girls. From 1996-2001, she served as the Director of the Shared Mission Focus on Young People, a General Conference initiative formerly based at the General Council on Ministries. Working on issues at the root cause level has been a theme in Linda’s career under-girded by a strong belief that the Kingdom of God can be realized on earth with hard work, strong, committed hearts, perseverance and vision. A life-long United Methodist, Linda served at local and national levels of the United Methodist Women’s organization, and from 1992-1996 served as a director of the Women’s Division. Linda has a Bachelor’s Degree in Socio-Economics and a Masters Degree in Public Administration. When not working, Linda enjoys visiting her three grandchildren, photography and gardening. She currently resides in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Louise & Hugh Moore Population Project

Linda: Mr. Hugh Moore invented Dixie cups a long time ago – that’s how he made his money. He also had a real interest in world peace and population issues back in the 60s. In the 60’s and 70’s, there was a real concern about a population explosion and having too many people on the earth. Mr. Moore became acquainted with our agency and its staff. When he died, he left some money to our board to work on population issues. So that’s what I do. I deal with issues related to population, but mostly related to women and children. I’ve had to narrow it down because, as you can imagine, almost any issue you can name relates in some way to population.

Evelyn: How do you approach the population issue?

Linda: The main things I work on are HIV and AIDS, and other issues that relate such as: domestic violence, gender-based violence, family planning and reproductive health, child marriage, obstetric fistula, and human trafficking.

Evelyn: So you collaborate a lot with other people and organizations?

Linda: Yes. And this is why I got involved with Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH) because it was a whole other group of people with whom I hadn’t ordinarily interfaced.

Getting started, getting to know people

Evelyn: How did you get started? How did you start making connections and getting your foot in the door right after college?

Linda: I could say that even my upbringing as a child and youth had a big influence on me. My parents were very much involved in the United Methodist Church – at that time it was just the Methodist Church. They took me and my sisters to church every Sunday and on Sunday evenings we had “Methodist Youth Fellowship”. That was where all the young people got together every Sunday night and we had snacks and we had educational activities. People would come in and talk to us about various and sundry issues, we visited colleges together, and all of this kind of stuff. So it was really then that I started forming a social conscience.

Then I went off to college. After I graduated from college, I was married right at the end of my junior year of college. I worked as a school social worker for three years before I had my first son. Then I took ten years off to raise my kids – I have two boys. During this time, after my first-born came, along, I became very involved with United Methodist Women as a volunteer. The reason I became involved with them was because they took very seriously concerns about women, children and youth, and they were very socially active, in terms of advocating for justice. I just really jumped in, feet first, with United Methodist Women and held various offices in the organization. In the late 1980’s, I obtained a graduate degree in public administration.

After that I worked for a while as a human services planner – this was all in Ohio. I had made connections by that time with people in the State of Ohio through the United Methodist Church, but also had made connections around the country through my work and travels with United Methodist Women. It was all volunteer, but they paid all of our travel expenses. I also served in Ohio, as the chair of the Board of Church and Society (of United Methodist Church), in Ohio, and I worked closely with people who worked here at this agency in Washington, DC. It was through my involvement with the women’s organization and then also chairing the annual conference of the Board of Church and Society in Ohio that hooked me in with people here and around the country. So I worked professionally for eight years as a human services planner in Ohio, on issues such as homelessness and housing, girls and teen pregnancy, school dropouts, and drug abuse of young people.

I left my job as a human services planner in the mid 90s and became the director a United Methodist Shared Mission Focus on Young People – a global initiative in the United Methodist Church to help the church as an institution take young people more seriously, give them leadership positions, and take a look at how church is relevant or not relevant to young people. This initiative is still exists and was relocated from Ohio to Nashville, Tennessee, and I decided not to relocate with it. Then this job came open, I applied for it. I knew so many people already here, my interview was with two people that I had already known for years, and was offered the position.

I think it’s just so important, especially for people in their twenties, to start building those connections and to get involved with something other than themselves, where they feel they are contributing to society, making a difference, making the world a better place. All those connections really have paid off for me in the long run.

Evelyn: Before you got your first job right after college, had you already known people you would be working for?

Linda: Actually, no. I’m trying to think how I got my first job. (Thinking…) Maybe it was a friend of mine back in Dayton that connected me to Family and Children Service Association, and they were looking for school social workers. Yeah, I’m trying to think of how I learned of the position… but anyhow! I got it through networking with someone but I don’t remember who.

I had never had a day of practicum… and here I was, hired on to do school social work working with children and their families. I even got into marriage counseling with families… I had NO experience… I just can’t believe that I did it! It was very difficult. Luckily I had supervisors who worked with me and helped me if I had questions. I was just newly married, but I had a sense of relationships and had a minor in psychology.

Evelyn: Why do you think it was you who got the job, not someone else who already had had experience?

Linda: I have a lot of confidence and I am somewhat of an extrovert – I’m kind of on the border of extrovert and introvert. I’m able to communicate and do well in terms of sitting and talking with people. That helps. I probably had some very good references… Who knows who they were!

Where do you see yourself professionally in 5-10 years? – What a typical interview question!

Evelyn: One question that employers often ask job candidates is: Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years? Did you know where you would be in five or ten years when you were fresh out of college?

Linda: Maybe not ten years. I certainly knew that my former husband and I did want children. I knew that in three to four years or so we would want to start a family, and that would be a big life change in itself. But beyond that, really, Evelyn, I didn’t. A lot of my life has just kind of opened up. I had worked for part of one summer at a job that I hated. So I knew I knew what I wanted and what I didn’t want to a certain extent – you just have to listen to yourself and also not stay in a place that is negative for you, if you have options. But I can’t say that I knew… You could ask me that question now – I’d have no idea.

Networking

Evelyn: You mentioned that your work required a lot of interaction with people and also networking. How do you make people remember you?

Linda: That’s a very interesting question. I don’t know if anyone has ever asked me that question before. Well, I would say probably the older I’ve become, the more authentic I’ve tried to be. In other words, there are some people who feel like they have to impress other people with their knowledge, with their manner, with the way they dress or whatever it might be. I probably have done my share of that over the years. But as I’ve aged, I just don’t feel like that’s important. So I guess I’m authentic with people. I think I’ve got a little braver over time. You’ve heard people say no question is a silly question – I don’t think everybody believes that. I think people have these standards for ourselves that we have to know everything and if we ask a question it must be really important. I try not to do that because there are certain questions that I’ll be thinking of asking, but might be a little scared to ask them; but then I go ahead and ask them and find that, yes, other people were thinking of the same thing but they didn’t say anything. I think just by putting yourself out there, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, and of course trying to be kind to people and respectful and considerate. People like that.

Evelyn: When you were less-experienced, were you as bold as you are?

Linda: Oh, no. No no no. That’s a kind of confidence – I don’t know if it’s confidence or just a place of being that I think we learn over a lifetime.

Evelyn: How do you think people with less experience can impress people with more experience?

Linda: I think that’s a trap, right there, “impressing”. If you goal is to impress someone, you’re in trouble. Just be yourself. Just say: I don’t need to know it all; I can ask questions; I have studied certain issues, am confident with my knowledge and understand issues… and not to be arrogant, but to contribute certain things – because you know certain things from your own life experience. For example, I went through a divorce ten years ago, so I can speak to that because I’ve gone through it. I have two children, and now grandchildren, so I can speak to those things because I’ve gone through it. So again, you just gain your own internal self respect. But not flaunt it.

Evelyn: What advice would you give to students and recent graduates on networking with professionals?

Linda: Well, I would say: appreciate and honor those experiences and forge as many relationships as you are comfortable with. Networks are good. They can help us achieve our dreams. So I would just say: honor all of them and take them for what they are, what pieces of wisdom and gifts they bring to your life; and then, you know, they may come in handy down the road some place. I think it’d be very hard to achieve certain things in our lives if we didn’t network with other people. Unless you’re a complete solitary person who believes he/she can achieve their goal in solitude.

Evelyn: So networking shouldn’t be a purpose. It is a means to achieve your purpose.

Linda: It is. It’s a means to an end. But it also gives us life because there’s too much on this earth to do just by yourself. I always tell groups I work in coalition with other people because I know we’re stronger when we’re unified in solidarity.

Real job, real life - advocacy

Evelyn: You do a lot of advocacy. In advocacy, you almost always have different opinions and extreme opinions from different people. How do you deal with that? How do you communicate with people with very different opinions?

Linda: This is one of my most difficult challenges. The most difficult issue I deal with in my portfolio is the abortion issue. It’s very polarized. There are people who believe that abortion should never happen, ever, under any circumstances. And there are those who believe that yes, it should be safe and legal and girls and women should have a choice depending on their circumstances and beliefs. Everything I do has to be consistent with what we call our “social principles”, which are the positions the church takes on issues. Our position on abortion is a mixed one. We believe it should be safe and legal, but then we have some conditions, under which that could or should happen. So I get people, not quite daily, but almost, who really disagree with me, or disagree with the church’s position, and just let me have it, or just let whoever’s reading the email have it. It might not be directed at me personally, but… I have to deal with people who disagree with me or the church’s position a lot. I used to lose sleep over it. It was horrible. People can get hateful around some of these things, calling you all sorts of names. I have a file in my email folder called “scary people” – some of them are scary, saying “you’re going to hell” “you’re going to burn in hell” …

So anyhow, some people I choose not to deal with because it’s a lose-lose proposition, no matter what I would say to them it wouldn’t satisfy them. But other people, I try to craft responses that reflect the position of the church. Homosexuality is another issue that’s in my portfolio.

Evelyn: So over the years you must have learned to either forget about nasty comments or not to let them influence you. How do you do it?

Linda: I don’t do a good job at it, frankly. It’s very troubling to get an email that attacks you. Nobody likes to be attacked. So when that happens, it takes a day or so for me to move my way through it. Some people have good points and some are more thoughtful than others in expressing themselves. I think sometimes it’s easier for me to just dismiss some of the people who are so hateful because they are so over the top.

But it’s the people who are more thoughtful and who are making really good points that cause me to think and may cause me to change my position, which I have. On one occasion recently, I pulled our support from a certain bill on abortion because we received a couple of emails about it and I had to look at the bill again and I said: You know, they’re right; we just shouldn’t be there. So you have to say that some people are here to “teach” us, and we can’t learn from that.

Evelyn: Do you need to watch or listen to the news a lot for your work?

Linda: Yes. The whole time I’m riding the metro and the bus into work I’m reading the Washington Post. I read it cover to cover. Then listen to the news. And it’s not a good time to live through right now. All of that can be stressful.

Evelyn: Do you find it hard to separate life and career? Since you get news from all sorts of media here and there all the time, does that constantly remind you of your work?

Linda: During the election, it was bad. It was horrible. My colleagues and I and then when I was with Dick (Linda’s fiancé), we’d always be talking about politics – politics constantly. Finally, Dick and I just had to say: “We can’t do this anymore. We’ve got to stop talking now.” There are other things – I play the piano, I listen to music, I’m starting a quilt, plus I’m going to get married in April so I’m planning a wedding – all of that takes me away from the news, which is a good thing. But it is important.

Evelyn: How do you manage your stress from work? Is there anything in particular you do in your spare time that helps relieve your stress?

Linda: There are several things, but I could do a much better job. I used to meditate a lot. And every now and then I do that. I now have a partner in my life. He’s a God-send because for me being an extrovert in part I get energy and healing through talking about things. So I would talk to Dick about issues that have bothered me or are pressing on me. He’s a great listener, and I find great relief in that. I go for walks and have to get lots of rest. Those are probably the primary things. I do read and pray, and that gives me some strength. But I need to do better at the stress management.

Motherhood vs. Career

Evelyn: You mentioned that you took ten years off to raise your children. When you did that, were you worried about your future career? Did you think the years you took off might be a disadvantage when you would start looking for a job again?

Linda: No. I worked part-time when Josh, my second born, went to kindergarten. I was an administrative assistant to a youth drop-out prevention program. Also I decided to go to graduate school. Then when the kids where getting out on their own, I began little by little creeping back into the world of paid work. But I know now women will say “It’ll put me behind…” But for me, it was worth it, totally worth it. I would have never done it differently. I was fortunate to have a spouse who made enough money for me to have that kind of flexibility. I’m grateful to have had that. I didn’t worry about getting behind or anything like that.

Evelyn: Had you planned to start working again when your children grew up? Or were you not sure?

Linda: No. I was sure. I really wanted to work. This was in the late 1970’s. That was when the whole women’s liberation movement was really getting going a lot. Women were going to work. They were working either part-time or full-time. Society was having to deal with that. I was really torn. I loved motherhood and homemaking – I still do. But I love my career, too. So I found myself wrestling between two different worlds, wanting both of them. I have the luxury of being in both worlds but there’s always that tension – am I spending too much time on my work and not having enough time at home?

More about Linda: Once a curious serious teen carrying a big black camera

After the interview in Linda’s office, she showed me the pictures on her bookshelf. One of them was an old picture of two families from Ohio taken in front of the White House. “Guess which one is me?” Linda smiled as she asked. Among the ten or so people, all looked so typically touristy except for one teenage girl, who looked serious but yet curious, wearing a pair of big, thick, black-rimmed eye-glasses, carrying a black camera which looked really big against her slim figure, and ready to explore the world, seriously. “This one.” I said as I pointed to the girl on the picture. Linda was kind of surprised that I got it right, since her appearance had changed a lot since then. Well, some things never change.