Dame Barbara Stocking joined Oxfam GB as Chief Executive in May 2001. Oxfam GB is a major international non-government organisation whose mission is “to work with others to overcome poverty and suffering”. Barbara has provided strong leadership within the organisation, including the Oxfam International confederation; and across the international development sector, during the last nine years.

Barbara is a member of the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response (SCHR), an alliance for voluntary action of currently nine major international humanitarian organisations, and was Chair from 2008 – 2010. She was also a member of UN Inter Agency Standing Committee for Humanitarian Action (IASC) from 2006-2010.

Barbara is a member of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) High Level External Committee on Millennium Development Goals.

In 2007, Barbara was a member of the BBC’s impartiality panel on business coverage, led by Sir Alan Budd.

Previously a member of the top management team of the National Health Service, in her eight years with the NHS, Barbara worked as regional director and then as the founding Director of the NHS Modernisation Agency. Barbara has a Masters degree in physiology, and has broad experience of healthcare systems, policy and practice, including periods at the National Academy of Sciences in the USA and with the World Health Organisation in West Africa.

Barbara is married and has two sons. She was awarded a CBE for health services in 2000, and a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2008 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.