Barbara Bloch is the Senior Advisor for the Community & Volunteer Engagement Unit. She is responsible for ensuring that the partnerships with Chapters, organizations, higher education institutions, and individual volunteer members have access to the resources, information, and opportunities to carry out Partners’ mission to connect, serve and change lives.
Prior to this position, Barbara served at Partners as a coordinator for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Leadership in International Community Development (Fellows), and program manager for USAID grants in Women in Development, the Afro-Latino Community Leadership Development in Honduras, and the InterAmerican Democracy Network. She was the previous interim director for Partners’ Education and Culture Program.
Barbara is a lifelong teacher, learner, and traveler. She started her career as a high school Spanish teacher in New York and while living overseas for nearly twenty years, she taught English as a Second Language in Guatemala, Turkey, and Afghanistan. Her career interests expanded into the business sector and after a brief stint as a stockbroker for a Wall Street firm, she did post-graduate studies in International Business. Barbara taught international banking, marketing and finance at the University of Palermo in Sicily and became a principal in a trading company in São Paulo, Brazil.
Barbara is a graduate and current member of the Alumni Board of Elmira College, with a B.S. in Education with a major in Spanish. She holds a masters from Middlebury College School of Languages (Vermont and Madrid) and a MBA in International Business from George Washington University.