Barbara brings 30 years of experience leading donor-funded initiatives on public health, migration, humanitarian action, and stabilization programming. She has worked with UN migration and refugee agencies across Africa and the Middle East and is highly skillful in tackling complex situations through creative problem solving, forging strategic partnerships with donors, governments, UN bodies, and local actors and conducting effective negotiations in politically challenging contexts.
She has held multiple executive roles in crisis and fragile countries, managing large offices and budgets over 100 million USD, and has strong expertise in team management as well as institutional and organisational development and governance. In Iraq, both as the head of the IOM’s Erbil office and deputy-Country Director in Baghdad, Barbara was part of the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) and the humanitarian cluster system, and negotiated partnerships with government, local partners and donors for various multi-year, flexible funding mechanisms, including for the resettlement of Yezedis, and humanitarian assistance and recovery programmes for displaced persons after the invasion of ISIS. As IOM’s Country Director in Niger, Barbara led the emergency response to the mass arrival of thousands of migrants in Niger and their subsequent voluntary, humanitarian return to countries of origin. She worked with multiple donors and a consortium of partners incl. UN, (I)NGOs to reduce mortality and suffering along the Central Mediterranean Route by providing humanitarian aid, protection, and search-and-rescue support to vulnerable migrants. In her most recent assignment as IOM’s Sub-coordinator for the Nordic countries and Denmark’s Country Director, she regularly provided expert briefings and advice to Nordic partners on a variety of topics, often using displacement data and analysis, including to MFA Denmark on working in politically challenging countries and advising the Danish Development Council on the HDPN approach.
Her leadership is characterized by strong stakeholder collaboration, and a practical, results-driven approach. Throughout her career, Barbara has delivered training and facilitated learning and strategy development, both internally and with external stakeholders and has a proven ability to strengthen capacity, facilitate communication and cooperation.
Countries: Angola, Denmark, Finland, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Senegal, South Africa, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland (Geneva), Tanzania, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
Languages: Dutch (Native); English (Excellent); French (Intermediate); Danish and German (Basic).
