Karla Ballard is the founder and CEO of YING, a P2P Group Skillsharing™ platform. YING helps members within groups and communities facilitate real time task requests between members. The platform has a b2b enterprise engagement for enterprises, NGO’s and government.
Mrs. Ballard, most recently ran on the Independent ticket as a VP candidate alongside fintech blockchain mogul and philanthropist Brock Pierce for the 2020 Presidential election. The campaign’s mission was fueled with a message of love, unity, and innovation and achieved positioning on 16 ballots throughout the US. Her impact in ensuring young people and disenfranchised voters came out yielded millions of impressions 43k voters. Mrs. Ballard was also formerly SVP of Participant Media’s TAG division, a social-action agency working with brands, foundations and the public sector to ignite compelling campaigns that drove impact in vulnerable communities. Prior to joining Participant Media she was with Ogilvy & Mather as the SVP and lead for The IMPACT Studio working on projects that ranged from the State of California to Sony Pictures Television. Previously Karla worked at One Economy Corporation where she led a vital division of a $51 million BTOP grant focused on broadband adoption and became an appointee to the Federal Communications Committee on Diversity in Media. In addition, she created and led corporate relationships with partners such as Comcast/NBC, Verizon, Participant Media, Sprint, City Year and others. She is a current advisory board member of Blue Star Families, Philadelphia 250, Shareable, VSchool, Ethtrust Blockchain, and USC’s Next Gen Council for Stephen Spielberg’s SHOAH Foundation. She’s been a visiting speaker at Harvard, UCLA and Georgetown University and is a former board member of the nation’s second largest Community College, Northern Virginia Community College. Karla is also the co-founder of the first Urban League in the state of Delaware, The Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League, and served as the first female national president of the National Urban League Young Professionals.
In 2012 Karla was awarded in NYC the Keeper’s of the Dream award from the National Action Network and a 2017 awardee of the FINTECH award presented by the Multicultural Media Telecom and Internet Council.
Founder
Advisories
My Story
“Growing up within the context of two diametrically opposed worlds, ‘well-to-do’ and ‘well not so much’—I was blessed to experience both aspects of life and thrilled to be able to serve as an intersectional bridge across political, financial, and cultural communities.”
– Karla Ballard
