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Dame Barbara Stocking, Chief Executive, Oxfam GB

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 seven years.

Since January 2008 Barbara has been Chair of the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response (SCHR), an alliance for voluntary action of currently nine major international humanitarian organisations. Barbara is a member of the UN Inter Agency Standing Committee for Humanitarian Action (IASC), and of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) High Level External Committee on Millennium Development Goals. She was one of 75 women leaders to attend the International Women Leaders Global Security Summit in New York, in November 2007. 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 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 was awarded a Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2008 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.