Jamie Bandstra

Leadership Coach. Culture Guide. Facilitator.

Jamie has a Bachelor’s Degree in Secondary Education and a Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership from Western Michigan University. He also has taken part in a number of leadership trainings, including Our Community Listens, a communication skills training developed by CEO Barry Wehmiller, and the Ground Zero Workshop on Continuous Improvement and Lean Applications. These types of experiences have shaped his understanding of leadership and provided valuable tools for a career of investing in the lives of others.

Jamie brings an expertise in developing culture, organizational growth, and systems thinking. Unifying people to effectively work together towards a common goal is his passion.

For the past six years, Jamie has served as a Superintendent. In this role, he has been charged with leading the developement of a new district, which provides an innovative project-based learning (PBL) environment to middle school and high school students. This has been some of the hardest and most rewarding work of his career. Building a district from the ground up has taught him much about leadership, culture, and teamwork. It has also given him the opportunity to understand systems and organizational dynamics from a very unique perspective.

Prior to this Jamie served as a Principal for the Ludington Area School District for nine years, and was the Project Director for a model prevention framework called the Leadership Resiliency Program (LRP), under a grant from the US Department of Education. As a consultant, he conducted extensive LRP training for organizations throughout the United States and Canada and worked with the Candadian National Crime Prevention Center, collaborating with government officials and Inuit communities in remote parts of Northern Canada.

Jamie enjoys the outdoors and is an avid backpacker. He has taken numerous solo treks and two summers ago, Jamie and his son spent ten days in the Candian Rockies, doing backcountry hikes throughout the region. Jamie has led and trained people in outdoor adventure activities for the past 20 years, and has guided groups in the Rockies, North Cascades, and the Adirondacks. Jamie also enjoys running and basketball.

Jamie is the father of five children (four boys and one girl), and he and his wife have been married for twenty-seven years. Even though his professional work is exciting and it's amazing to get up every day and love what you do, he says his family is the real love of his life.