Faculty Directory

Barbara teaches Leadership Communications at Boston University Questrom School at the graduate levels and recently created the new MBA course, The Entrepreneur’s Communication Playbook: Persuading Throughout the Entrepreneurial Cycle.
Barbara, a Managing Principal of Knightsbridge Advisers, LLC, joined Knightsbridge after spending more than twenty years as a venture capitalist, holding General Partner positions with both Charles River Ventures and Schroder Ventures. As a Managing Principal of Knightsbridge, Barbara co-led the firm, including investments in premier venture capital funds, finance and operations, marketing, and compliance. Stepping back in 2108 to embrace new endeavors, she remains actively involved at Knightsbridge in all aspects of portfolio management, including investment due diligence and decision-making processes.
In addition to Knightsbridge, Barbara serves on the Board of BankProv and Provident Bancorp, an innovative public commercial bank serving small to medium enterprises, search fund lending, and underserved niche markets such as crypto companies. She serves as a Board Member, Executive Committee Member, and Chair of the Development Committee of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, aimed at improving brain health and making sports safer.
Barbara works as an advisor with six emerging venture capital firms: Construct Capital, serving entrepreneurs disrupting foundational industries; At One Ventures, intent on making humans a net positive for the planet; Tera Ventures in Estonia, focused on born-global digital startups; the Material Impact Fund, focused on materials; _Underscore, focused on the cloud; and Will Ventures, focused on sports technology. She has worked as an advisor with several early stage technology companies spanning industry sectors such as robotics, cybersecurity, and fintech, and currently serves on the Advisory Board of RealBlocks.
As General Partner of Charles River Ventures from 1986 to 1992, Barbara was responsible for a successful portfolio of health care, technology, and consumer companies and served on the boards of several companies, including Community Health Systems and Abacus Direct. From 1992 to 1999, she invested with a life science focus as a Partner of Schroder Ventures, co-founding SV Life Sciences and serving on the boards of eight companies, including GelTex Pharmaceuticals and Heritage Health. From 2000 to 2006, she was President of Blackwood Capital, investing in and advising private and public companies.
Barbara received an MBA with honors from Harvard Business School and holds a BS summa cum laude from Boston College where she graduated first in her class. She serves as a Philanthropic Board Member of Boston Children’s Hospital and a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors, Women Corporate Directors, the Massachusetts Women’s Forum, and previously served on the boards of the Koch Center for Cancer Research at MIT, and the Harvard Business School Association of Boston. She has been an annual judge for the HBS New Ventures Competition for over twenty years.