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Barbara McConnel BARRETT
Space Flight participant, USA

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:
December 26, 1950, Indiana County, Pennsylvania state.

EDUCATION AND ACADEMIC TITLES:
She got the following degrees at Arizona State University: in 1972 she was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Science; in 1975 she got the degree of Master of Arts; in 1978 she took the degree of the Doctor of Law.
She is the honourary Doctor at Arizona State University, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Thunderbird School of Global Management and University of South California.

MARITAL STATUS:
Her husband is Craig Barrett, born in 1939, the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Intel Inc. She has two children.

HOBBIES:
Experienced professional-level pilot. She was on a cycling tour through Finland (covered nearly 1000 km by bicycle). In August 2007 she climbed the mountain Kilimanjaro (Tanzania).

AWARDS:
She was presented the following awards: Horatio Alger Award; Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship and Sandra Day O'Connor Excellence Award from the American Bar Association.

WORK EXPERIENCE:
In 1972 she started working at legislative assembly of Arizona state where she devoted herself to studying the problems of traffic flows in a city, county and at a state level.

She was nearly thirty years of age, when she started running two transport companies included in the Fortune magazine list of the 500 leading companies.

After Ronald Reagan had won the 1980 elections and became the US President, she was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board.

During the eighties' of the last century, she had been the partner in the big law firm in Phoenix, the deputy Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration.

At the same time, she was the President of Arizona World Affairs council, Arizona World Trade Organization and the Economic Club of Phoenix. Also she was the national Chairman of the U.S. Secretary of Commerce's Export Conference in Washington, district Columbia.

In the 90s of the last century she had been the President and Executive Director of the American Management Association, the world's largest organization responsible for specialists training in management, business journalism and retraining of leaders. Also she was the Chairman of Valley Bank of Arizona's Founders, lectured on leadership at the Institute of Politics Fellow at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In addition, she was the member of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.

In 1994 she was nominated for election to the post of Arizona state governor from the Republican Party, but had lost the elections.

In 2000 she headed the delegation of the world's famous women leaders in a tour of the 6 Chinese cities as the President of the International Women's Forum, assisted in organization and reviving of the Forum representative offices activities in Russia, South Africa, Jordan, Ireland, Chile, Argentina and Ecuador. Also she chaired the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy and was the senior counsellor of the US representative office at the United Nations Organization where she addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization. She held executive posts at the Freedom House Fund, the Center for International Private Enterprise, the National Legal Center and the Global Center for Dispute Resolution Research.

Prior to being appointed the Ambassador, she had been the President and executive Director of the Triple Creep Guest Ranch in Darby Montana State. She was the member of the boards at the Raytheon and Exponent Inc., served as the member of the Supervisory Board of Aerospace Corporation, Mayo clinic and Thunderbird School of Global Management. She worked in the American-Afghan Women Council together with the Thunderbird School under the Artemis Project, the program of Afghan women entrepreneurs training.

She was the member of Horatio Alger Association Board and the Senior Advisory Board at Harvard's Institute of Politics.

In April 2008 the US senate approved her nomination to the US Ambassador post in Finland. From April 20, 2008 till January 16,2008 she had been the US Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary in Finland; subsequently, she had been dismissed from the office due to the fact that the representative of the Democratic Party Barack Obama had taken over the President's duties.

She was the first civil woman pilot who had performed landing by F/A-18 Hornet on aircraft carrier.

On June 4, 2009 Russian information agencies reported with reference to the Intel Chairman of the Board of Directors Craig Barrett that his wife would join the backup crew of Soyuz TMA-16 transport manned space vehicle (whose launch was scheduled for September 30, 2009) as amateur space flight participant. On the same day she confirmed that information in an interview with R/A News Agency. More recently, Roscosmos Human Flight Program Director Alexei Krasnov declared that Guy Laliberte and his backup Barbara Barrett had already started training in the Star City.

September 2009
Based on data of site astronaut.ru