Dr. Barbara N. Stevens is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and served in the Central Intelligence Agency for more than 35 years. As a former executive leader and manager, Barbara built and then directed complex data science programs. She provided deep expertise in applying big data analytics at the operational and analytical levels of the Intelligence Community. Barbara honed her analytic skills as a trainer in analytic tradecraft as well as in leadership development. In addition, she used her platform as an agency leader to advocate for the recruitment and retention of women and diversity in highly technical fields. She maintained strong ties to academia having served as CIA’s top leader to the University of New Mexico and as the Data Science Ambassador to the Institute for Advanced Analytics at North Carolina State University.

Barbara holds a PhD from the Florida State University in Mathematical Statistics, and previously served on the faculty in the Department of Statistics at the University of Georgia.