Profile

Barbara Stewart has throughout her career been a catalyst for building, guiding and mentoring teams. She has focused on weaving business strategy into government, non-profit and for-profit operations in order to strengthen capacity to execute on the core mission. With over 30 years of public, private and nonprofit experience, Ms. Stewart provides significant perspective and strategic thinking to the organizations she leads or serves.

Barbara served as the Presidentially-appointed, Senate confirmed CEO of AmeriCorps from 2018 until 2021. AmeriCorps, the federal agency for service and volunteerism, provides resources to more than 2,000 organizations throughout the country that host nearly 300,000 AmeriCorps members and AmeriCorps Senior volunteers.

Prior to her federal service, Barbara held leadership roles in the private sector, including more than a decade as a senior vice president at JPMorgan Chase, and in Illinois state government. Barbara has extensive bipartisan experience working with elected officials at the federal, state and local levels.

In 2012, Barbara and her husband Peter Bowe co-founded the Bowe-Stewart Foundation with a focus on closing the opportunity gap for urban residents in Baltimore and Chicago. The Foundation provides strategic guidance and financial support to organizations that help individuals improve their lives through education, training and work experience.

Barbara earned a B.A. from Northwestern University and an M.B.A. from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. She currently serves on the National Advisory Boards of Service Year Alliance and The Policy Circle and is a Trustee of the American Battlefield Trust. Barbara has chaired multiple civic and non-profit organizations in both Chicago and Baltimore and helped found a charter school in Chicago. She is 1991 Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow and a member the Economic Club of Chicago.