A highly successful and industry recognized corporate career spanning four decades and crossing five industries: retail, financial services, municipal government, logistics/distribution and automotive. An innovator and risk-taker known for her passion for business alignment, organizational strategy, optimizing and developing exceptional IT talent.She became the first female Vice President in the technology function at American Express and led the company globally into the personal computing and networking generation, connecting travel offices and operating centers around the world together for the first time. Her reputation as an innovator and risk taker built from there as she took on her first CIO role at Maricopa County, Arizona, the fourth largest in the US. She was appointed acting County Manager during a serious and widely publicized financial crisis in 1994. Established a turnaround strategy that avoided bankruptcy and established a viable budget and funding model leading to financial stability. Her reputation as a successful turnaround and transformational leader established, she started being recruited for even more challenging CIO roles. She was recruited by Toyota having spent a short fourteen months as the CIO for MicroAge. She was recruited from MicroAge by Toyota to transform an IT function not keeping pace with the dramatic growth of the business in North America. As CIO of Toyota, she was responsible for modernizing the company’s technology, the IT organization, and governance practices. In addition to her CIO role, she also led the University of Toyota that was responsible to the professional development of all Toyota staff as well as the training support for all Lexus & Toyota dealership technicians. Barbara was the founder of the first business support network for women in Toyota. She established her own business in 2013 specializing in Executive Coaching for "C"-SUITE executives and their direct reports as well as a focus on CIO’s and senior IT management. She serves as a coach for IDG's CIO Executive Council’s Pathways Program as well as coaching clients directly in both private and public sector IT as part of her consulting company.