This blog post is part of a series titled Taking the Lead: An Inside Look at Eskenazi Health's Leadership. Different leaders throughout Eskenazi Health will be featured, giving an inside look at their work roles, backgrounds, passions and even hobbies. We hope you enjoy learning about some of the exceptional leaders Eskenazi Health is proud to employ.

As a dedicated leader who will tell you his job never offers a dull moment, Eric Ballance has been with Eskenazi Health for 10 years where he serves as Director of Environmental Services, and he’s grateful that each day brings its own set of opportunities and challenges.

Ballance works out of the Eskenazi Health downtown campus, but may also be seen at the Eskenazi Health Center and Eskenazi Health Midtown Community Mental Health facilities as well. He oversees 106 in-house staff members, which includes three managers and seven supervisors. Ballance is also responsible for overseeing approximately 40 additional contracted staff members who clean the offsite locations. 

Vital aspects of his job include ensuring that Eskenazi Health is compliant with all regulatory standards to keep the organization’s energy conservation scores at or above the national benchmark. Other major duties he’s responsible for include overseeing his department’s annual budget and working to keep employee engagement and morale up to Eskenazi Health standards. Ballance also does all he can to keep his department’s turnover rate below 15 percent. 

A business major at Indiana Wesleyan University prior to joining the workforce fulltime, Ballance was employed by the Dora Brothers Hotel Group and helped open newly constructed hotels during his brief employment there.

During the majority of his career, Ballance worked for Starwood Hotels & Resorts where he was the director of housekeeping for the Westin Hotel in downtown Indianapolis. Prior to that, he served as the director of housekeeping at the Sheraton/Westin Hotel & Suites located at Keystone at the Crossing in Indianapolis. Ballance also traveled around the country as a task force specialist where he would travel to new builds and work in interim positions where he would fill in until construction was finished or until the position was filled.

As his family structure was changing, Ballance grew weary of the tremendous amount of time he was working in the hotel business and decided to look for something else. Eskenazi Health has provided him with a much happier work balance, he greatly appreciates the diverse staff that he works with, and he believes wholly in the mission of the organization to offer high-quality, cost-effective and patient-focused health care to the residents of Marion County and Central Indiana.

Ballance sees one of his major duties as being an advocate and supporter of his staff in encouraging them to step out of their comfort zones and apply themselves in other career opportunities at Eskenazi Health and outside the organization.

While he believes he is a product of a vulnerable population, Ballance is dedicated to giving back to the community that he was once a part of. To that end, he coaches youth basketball at his place of worship, and he also serves as a mentor. He uses his current position at Eskenazi Health as a platform to say to those he works with that if he can make it out of challenging circumstances, anyone can.

In his spare time, Ballance enjoys playing basketball, playing pool and playing a card game called Dad. When it comes to cooking, he’ll tell you that like most men, he’s a grill master.

When the time comes, Ballance would like to be remembered as an upstanding individual who did what he could to make a positive difference in the lives of others he was a part of.