While in college in Ohio, Allison Warren-Barbour founded the Miami University Women’s Rugby Football Club. Anyone familiar with rugby knows it’s a rough-tough sport and a game of scrappy camaraderie.
She met her husband, Kevin Barbour, while working at the Grand Canyon with Christian Ministry in the National Parks. Warren-Barbour also spent a summer with the ministry at Glacier National Park, where she learned to drive the distinctive “red jammer” touring buses over the twisty Going-to-the Sun Road.
In her early 20s, she took a solo backpacking trip to Australia and New Zealand. In 2006, she trekked nearly 40 miles in Nepal, from Lukla to Mount Everest Base Camp, elevation 17,598 feet.
The daughter of teachers — her dad was a boys’ basketball coach — Warren-Barbour grew up with three sisters in Piqua, Ohio, believing she was up to any challenge.
On Jan. 1, she’ll have a new challenge in Snohomish County. United Way of Snohomish County announced Oct. 7 that Warren-Barbour, 38, has been selected as the agency’s next president and CEO. She will succeed Dennis Smith, who is retiring Dec. 31.
Herald readers learned her official biography earlier this month. She is coming here from North Carolina’s Raleigh-Durham area. There, she was a senior vice president with United Way of the Greater Triangle.
With a bachelor’s degree in business changes management and organizational behavior from Miami University, she earned a master of divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary. She and her husband are the parents of two daughters, ages 5 and 3.
Warren-Barbour chatted about her life, faith and hopes for the local United Way during a visit Wednesday to the agency’s offices in Everett.
“My passion is to move the needle for under-represented voices,” she said. “I’m a builder, motivated to create equity in the community.”
That passion stems from her Christian faith, but also from her travels.
As a student, she saw the poorest of the poor during mission trips to Jamaica and Mexico. Later, time spent at Third Mesa on the Hopi Reservation in northeast Arizona gave her an eye-opening view of poverty Warren-Barbour said she had never seen in U.S. cities.
“Circumstances are handed to people,” she said. Through United Way, she said she’ll work to provide access to opportunities and education “for people not born into the same circumstances I was.” Through her upbringing and her faith, she feels compelled to give back. “I was raised to be involved in the community,” she said.
Faith, she said, is a filter through which she sees the world. She didn’t see a divinity degree as a stepping stone to being a pastor. For her, Christianity is “based on servanthood,” Warren-Barbour said.
She intends to make service to others a foundation of her work here with United Way. About 15 years ago, she made a switch aligned with that philosophy. Her career began on the corporate ladder. She worked in Colorado for Anderson Consulting, which later became Accenture.
She switched to nonprofits in Atlanta, where she worked for a financial literacy organization, and later for United Way of Greater Atlanta.
Here, she plans to foster a “collective impact model,” which works to solve complex social problems though collaborative partnerships. “We will do some new, interesting and exciting things as a means to break the cycle of poverty,” she said.
That’s a serious challenge for anyone. The mother of two little girls said she has the support of an incredible partner. Her husband, who has a master of divinity and a doctoral degree in the Old Testament, is a stay-home dad and former teacher.
Like so many moms, Warren-Barbour knows all about juggling career and family. “Work-life balance doesn’t exist,” she quipped. Still, family time is precious — including the dinner hour.
“Our daughters eat later than most 5- and 3-year-olds,” she said.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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