Barbara Stinson, Senior Partner

Barbara Stinson, a Founding and Senior Partner of Meridian Institute, offers more than 30 years of experience designing, facilitating, and managing collaborative decision-making processes of all types. Her expertise and insights have helped individuals and organizations in the public and private sectors pursue innovative approaches to resolving conflicts, particularly in the arenas of agricultural development, alternative energy development, ecosystem restoration, climate change, air-quality management, land use, natural resource management, and low-level radioactive waste disposal. Ms. Stinson has designed international collaborative processes, mediated national regulatory negotiations in the U.S., conducted policy dialogues, and convened numerous multi-stakeholder workshops on controversial public policy issues.

Recently, Ms. Stinson has specialized in creating effective, collaborative processes for building institutions, developing long-term plans and strategies, and launching new initiatives. Currently, she serves as project co-director for the Partnership for Aflatoxin Control in Africa (PACA), a multi-sector development project aimed at reducing aflatoxin prevalence across the continent of Africa.

Among other accomplishments, Ms. Stinson conducted an analysis of and co-authored a chapter on joint fact-finding in consensus building processes that was published in The Consensus Building Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Reaching Agreement (1999). In addition to Ms. Stinson’s experience in dispute resolution, she has earned a Masters in City Planning, Environmental Policy and Mediation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Conservation from the University of Colorado, Boulder.