Born in Maine, Lynnsay began her career in journalism in middle school when she asked a local retailer why he opened a sweatshop-free clothing store. She wrote about it for the local paper. The article still hangs on her parent's fridge.

She went to the University of Maine and majored in journalism and political science. While in college, she juggled roles as a full-time producer and host at the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, an assistant editor at the University of Maine's student newspaper, and as the Independent Candidate editor at Scoop08. During this period, Lynnsay's coffee consumption reached record highs.

After six years at MPBN, Lynnsay took a job in Tangier, Morocco, where she developed a communications strategy for a new American university and wrote in her free time. Freelancing for two international news outlets, she reported on a legislative loophole that forced Moroccan girls into underage marriages, interviewed a family of Syrian refugees, and at one point, gassed on for fifteen minutes about what she was reading to a man she later learned was a former US Ambassador.

Back in the US, Lynnsay took a drive-time host/producer position at the prestigious NPR affiliate, WGBH in Boston, and filed pieces for NPR's All Things Considered. Her program, Classical Music with Lynnsay Maynard, received record Nielsen ratings for the station and was featured in The Huffington Post. Among other achievements, she once interviewed a MacArthur Fellow over the phone with her hair in rollers and snapped a selfie in an elevator with PBS' Arthur after emceeing a WGBH event.

Lynnsay currently lives in Seattle.