2001 – Paradise Valley, Arizona
Barbara McConnell attended Arizona State University. Even aided by scholarships, she worked up to five jobs at a time while earning her B.S., masters and law degrees and financially supporting her widowed mother and five siblings. As a student legislative intern she coordinated Senate and House efforts to create the Arizona Depart. of Trans. Her career in international business and aviation law began in Phoenix. Before the age of 30, she was an executive and officer of two Fortune 500 companies and later a partner in the law firm of Evans, Kitchel and Jenckes. At age 31, President Ronald Reagan appointed her Vice Chairman of the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board, where she negotiated international aviation agreements with dozens of countries. Then, as the first woman Deputy Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, she managed a 47,000-employee organization with a budget of $6 billion. In the 1990s, Barbara served as the President and CEO of the American Management Association, the world’s largest organization for professional managers. In 1999 she was a teaching fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, then taught at the Moscow School of Political Studies in Russia. During the Persian Gulf War she was a civilian advisor to Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and General Colin Powell. Mrs. Barrett is an instrument rated pilot and the first civilian woman to land in an F/A-18 Hornet on an aircraft carrier. In 1994 she ran for Governor of Arizona, in 1999 received the prestigious Horatio Alger Award and now serves as Chairman of the Board of Valley Bank of Arizona and on the boards of Raytheon Company and Exponent, Inc., as well as Harvard’s Institute of Politics, Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management and numerous other national and international boards. She is a past President of the International Women’s Forum. Barbara is CEO of Triple Creek Guest Ranch, a luxury Montana hideaway. She and her husband Craig, CEO of Intel, live in Paradise Valley.
