Barbara Bry
Barbara Bry is the chief operating officer of Blackbird Ventures which invests in and incubates early stage technology companies. She has been on the founding team of several companies and three nonprofit organizations. Barbara was a co-founder of Atcom/Info, the leader in developing internet kiosks and high speed internet access in hotel rooms. The company was sold in 1999 in a transaction valued at $80 million and is now owned by Cisco. In addition, Barbara was on the founding management team of Proflowers.com, which completed a successful initial public offering in December 2003 as Provide Commerce and then was sold to Liberty Media in 2006 for $477 million. Barbara is also the founder of San Diego Athena, San Diego’s premier organization for women technology executives and entrepreneurs. She spent 10 years at the University of California, San Diego where she was the first associate director of CONNECT, which has received international recognition for its efforts in linking technology entrepreneurs with the resources they need for success. She also served as the founding editor and CEO of Voice of San Diego, an innovative non-profit news and information web site. Barbara is currently on the board of the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego where she serves on the Executive Committee, and she has been a board member of Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest. She teaches entrepreneurship at UC San Diego and writes a weekly column on entrepreneurship with her husband Neil Senturia for U-T San Diego. She is also the founder of Run Women Run which supports women for elected and appointed office. Barbara’s early career was as a business and political writer for the Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times. She has a B.A. degree in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania and MBA from Harvard Business School. She is married to entrepreneur Neil Senturia, and the couple has four children between the ages of 27 and 31.
