Biography

Before serving on the San Diego City Council, Barbara was the chief operating officer of Blackbird Ventures which invests in and incubates early stage technology companies. She has been an entrepreneur in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors.

Barbara was a co-founder of Atcom/Info, the leader in developing internet kiosks and high speed internet access in hotel rooms, which was sold to Cisco. In addition, she was on the founding management team of Proflowers.com, which completed a successful initial public offering in December 2003 as Provide Commerce and then was sold to Liberty Media in 2006 for $477 million.

Barbara is also the founder of San Diego Athena, San Diego’s premier organization for women technology executives and entrepreneurs. She spent 10 years at the University of California, San Diego where she was the first associate director of CONNECT, which has received international recognition for its efforts nurturing startup technology and life science companies. She also served as the founding editor and CEO of Voice of San Diego, an innovative non-profit news and information web site.

In October 2014, Barbara was appointed by Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker to a two-year term on the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Barbara is a member of ARCS, Achievement Rewards for College Scientists, and is Vice Chair of the board of the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego. She is a past board member of Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest. She teaches entrepreneurship at UC San Diego and writes a weekly column on entrepreneurship with her husband Neil Senturia for U-T San Diego. She is also the founder of Run Women Run which supports women for elected and appointed office.

Barbara is married to entrepreneur Neil Senturia, and they have four children between the ages of 29 and 33. She earned a Master’s degree from Harvard Business School.