Atlanta professor calls zWORKS home

One zWORKS member doesn’t commute across town, she commutes across the country.

Lindsey Bullinger flies to Atlanta, Georgia about once a week and is technically considered a super-commuter.

Bullinger does public policy research and teaches at Georgia Tech. Her education route included an undergrad at Miami University, a master’s at Syracuse University and a doctorate at Indiana University.

“What I enjoy about doing this is that these decisions that people are making everyday are affecting people everywhere,” Bullinger said. “It’s important to know if public policy is doing what it’s supposed to be doing.”

She focuses on how public policy affects the health and well-being of children, specifically.

When not researching, Bullinger teaches public policy, economics or statistics classes. She has an in-person class on Tuesdays then teaches via video conference on Thursdays.

She is usually either doing video conferences in the zWORKS’ conference rooms or researching in the heads-down space.

“I knew I would not be able to survive working every single day from Starbucks,” she said. “I needed someplace more regular and reliable.”

While Bullinger and her family will be moving to Atlanta this summer, they have called Zionsville their home for the past six years. Her husband is finishing a program at Purdue University so the couple decided to split the difference and live in Zionsville.

A few other things she enjoys about zWORKS are the free coffee, walking or biking to work, and being able to meet her husband for lunch in Zionsville.

Her research involves a lot of coding and data analytics. So, her main piece of advice to zWORKers involves patience.

“You’re never going to learn everything there is to know about a programming software,” she said. “You’re going to be Googling what you want to do all the time.”

She also extended this to research, in general.

“In my generation, we are used to getting everything at the snap of a finger with phones and technology,” she said. “But doing research is a long-run game. It’s a different mindset and one that takes a while to adjust to.”

Her work has been published in journals such as Contemporary Economic Policy, Children and Youth Services Review, Health Services Research, American Journal of Public Health, etc. Read more about Bullinger on her website.

Getting to know Lindsey…

• Lindsey has run 18 half marathons and 1 full marathon.
• She teaches a Pilates and yoga fusion class at Simply Yoga in Zionsville.