Barbara Stapleton provides strategic guidance and sustainable impact within economic development and workforce development projects with a focus on ensuring that diversity, equality, accessibility and labor practices align to create shared economic prosperity.

Barbara most recently served Senior Vice President of Talent Advancement for the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, where she was integral in securing Federal EDA Good Jobs Challenge grant award funds of $8.4M to align employer needs and key partners with the talent and training to improve economic mobility for historically marginalized residents.

Previously as Vice President of Business Retention & Talent Initiatives for the Greater Topeka Partnership, she created the talent recruitment & relocation program, Choose Topeka, and led the $6.4M partial demolition and remodel project of the Washburn Tech East campus, a public-private partnership between city and county governments and postsecondary education designed to reduce the burden of college degree and certificate programs for historically underserved residents in the region. She was also the Associate Director for Career & Technical Education in Workforce Development with the Kansas Board of Regents and conducted audits to ensure civil rights compliance through the Federal Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights.  She holds a bachelor of arts in political science from Purdue University and a master of science in management from Baker University.

Barbara is a fellow through the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Business Leads Fellowship, having met the rigorous criteria for selection; partnering with the US Chamber for five or more years as an established education and workforce leader and having implemented multiple successful education and workforce development solutions in her respective communities. She completed cohort IX of the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s TPM Academy, part of the Talent Pipeline Management^TM (TPM) initiative and is a past fellow with the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executive’s (ACCE) Fellowship for Education and Talent Development.  She previously served on the Development Advisory Board for the Zucker Family School of Education at The Citadel, and as the vice-chair of Kansas’ Local Area II Workforce Development Board, as well as prior service on Washburn University’s Leadership Institute Advisory Board, Emporia State University’s Corporate Advisory Board, and the International Economic Development Council’s Higher Education Advisory Committee.