Sometimes our career paths take us full-circle and that it is the case with Linda Grider. She began her higher education at Lindsey Wilson College by earning an Associate in Arts Degree and then returned to the College to serve as Vice-President for Enrollment Management after completing her Bachelor Degree at the University of Kentucky and teaching three years in the Jefferson County Public School System in Louisville, Kentucky. During her first tenure at Lindsey Wilson College, the College experienced both enrollment growth and academic expansion and, as a result, became a fully accredited four-year college with an extensive, very successful evening college program structured for working adults.  Mrs. Grider could identify with these adult learners because while working full-time at the College, she earned her Master Degree in Public Service from Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

After seven busy, innovative, rewarding years at Lindsey Wilson College, she decided to pursue another career as a human resources professional. This career move took her into the manufacturing world where she experienced cutting-edge manufacturing processes and practices.  At Batesville Casket Company, a division of Hillenbrand Industries, she served in all areas of human resources: recruitment and hiring, training, compensation and benefits, safety, employee development and labor relations.  She wanted to complement her human resources experience by becoming certified in the Toyota Production System and conducting Kaizen training and events. This experience has provided her the opportunity to bring real-life work experiences to the classroom and, more specifically to the business students at Lindsey Wilson College.

After leaving Batesville Casket Company, she entered the world of e-commerce when she became an employee of Amazon at Campbellsville, Kentucky. She served as Learning Manager which involved all aspects of training new employees to successfully open Amazon's large Fulfillment Center.  She and her staff of certified trainers met their challenge by training over 2,000 employees in the technology skills required in the high tech world of Amazon. After two years at Amazon, she left to become Human Resources Manager at the CLARCOR manufacturing plant in Campbellsville, Kentucky. This was another start-up of a new plant and again she stepped up to the challenge of staffing a new plant successfully. CLARCOR is a multinational corporation that is one of the world's foremost manufacturers of filtration products. The Company has operations and sales offices on every major continent in the world. The Campbellsville Plant produced both residential and industrial air filtration products. In her eight-year tenure at CLARCOR, the plant evolved into a three-shift operation which met and/or exceeded its production, quality, and safety goals.

Then came the economic crisis of 2008 and the decrease in the manufacturing sector, Mrs. Grider decided to look at re-entering the world of higher education, this time wearing another hat and filling another role as Director of Community Education and Outreach at Lindsey Wilson College. As Director, her duties include teaching in the Business Department and serving as head of the Center for Entrepreneurship. Thus the full-circle career path is completed.

Development of the Lindsey Wilson College Center for Entrepreneurship has been one of Mrs. Grider's top priorities. The economic recovery of the United States is based to a great degree on the activities of its entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs create both small and large businesses by taking their conceived business concepts to fruition. Mrs. Grider has a keen interest in entrepreneurship to further enhance the economic development of the area and to try to "spark" the entrepreneurial spirit in students and the general public. She enjoys coupling this with teaching in the classroom and helping students learn and grow.

Being an entrepreneur herself, she and her husband run a farming operation that involves both horses and beef cattle. Between work and the farm, there is little spare time, but when there is, she enjoys cooking, decorating, gardening, landscaping, sharing time with friends and family, and, maybe, some shopping.