Susan P Bari
President, The Susan Bari Company
Secretary/Treasurer, Board of Directors

Susan Phillips Bari has enjoyed a diverse career providing her skills as a leader, manager, and marketer in the public, nonprofit and entrepreneurial sectors.

Currently, Bari is the president of The Susan Bari Company: Imagine, Plan, Execute which provides business development coaching, customer acquisition strategies and supplier diversity consulting services to corporations and entrepreneurs.

She is president emeritus of the Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), the leading advocate for the advancement of women owned businesses as vendors and suppliers to the nation's corporations, and was its founding architect in 1997. Bari, during her tenure as President grew the organization to become the nation's leading third-party certifier of businesses owned and operated by women and counting among its members America's top corporations for Supplier Diversity.

Throughout her career, Bari has been committed to fostering diversity in the world of commerce by expanding opportunities and eliminating barriers in the marketplace for women business enterprises. Bari started out in the early '70s as a maverick, the first woman to be an independent manufacturer's representative in the textile industry and subsequent owner of manufacturing and consulting businesses. In 1986, while serving as an Associate Director of the Office of Presidential Personnel, she entered the public advocacy arena on behalf of women business owners as the Chair of then President Reagan's Interagency Committee on Women's Business Enterprise. From 1990 to 1995 she continued to champion women business owners as a founding Executive Director of the American Women's Economic Development Corporation Washington Regional Training Center, assisting more than 2,000 women with the startup and growth of their companies.

In 1994, she received the Small Business Administration's Small Business Advocate of the Year award for Women in Business for the Washington, D.C. region. She was awarded the first "Impact Award" by the Billion Dollar Roundtable in 2004 and was one of the first inductees into the Enterprising Women Hall of Fame.

In 1997 Bari was appointed by then Virginia Governor George Allen to a four-year term on the Board of Visitors of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, from whose Pamplin College of Business she received her MBA degree in 1985 and for which she serves on its business advisory council. She is a member of the Women's Leadership Board of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, the Board of Directors of the Women Presidents' Organization and the Advisory Council of Enterprising Women magazine for which she writes a bi-monthly column. In March, 2007, Bari completed her third term as a member of the National Women's Business Council, advisors to the President, the Congress and the Administrator of the SBA.

In January, 2007, Bari and partners Leslie Saunders and Thomas Christopoul launched a biometric identification marketing, enrollment and training company, Fly Fast, LLC, which operates primarily on airports and in partnership with Registered Traveler service providers.

Bari is the author of three books, Breaking Through: Creating Opportunities for America's Women and Minority Owned Businesses", "Partnering for Profit: Success Strategies for Tomorrow's Supply Chain", and "Yes, I Can Do That!"