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Barbara Hackman Franklin has served in five presidential administrations and, under President Richard Nixon, led the first White House effort to recruit women for high-level government jobs. She later served as the 29th U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President George H.W. Bush. Currently, Franklin is President and CEO of Barbara Franklin Enterprises, a private international consulting firm headquartered in Washington, D.C. She is an advocate for and advisor to U.S. companies doing business in international markets, notably China, and is an expert on corporate governance, auditing and financial reporting practices.

Born in Lancaster County, Penn., to two educator parents, Franklin learned the importance of hard work and education from an early age. She graduated from high school in 1958 as class valedictorian and went on to the Pennsylvania State University where she graduated with distinction in 1962. Toward the end of her undergraduate work, the school’s Dean of Women nominated her for a scholarship to attend Harvard Business School (HBS), which had only just opened its doors to women. Franklin was admitted as one of only 14 women in her class, an experience she described as “interesting” and “character building.”

In 1964, Franklin graduated from Harvard with an MBA degree and moved to New York City where she took a job with the Singer Company—the first woman they had ever hired. At Singer, Franklin served on the corporate planning staff and created a new environmental analysis function to watch trends and analyze competition worldwide. She went on to serve as an Assistant Vice President at CitiBank, again as one of only a few women in the company. Throughout the early part of her trailblazing career, Franklin encountered much resistance from male colleagues, many of whom were skeptical that women could succeed in the business world. Because there were so few professional networking opportunities for women at the time, Franklin and her friend Charlotte Browne-Mayers of Standard Oil Company, organized their own networking group, hosting meetings once per month for former classmates and working women to talk about their careers, their struggles and their successes.

In 1971, she received a phone call from one of her HBS classmates who was working in the new Nixon White House. He was looking for a special assistant to the President who would be responsible for recruiting women for high-level government jobs. This was the first time any administration had undertaken such a specific initiative to advance women, and Franklin reported for her first day of work at the White House on April 12, 1971. Her directive from President Nixon was to double the number of women in top jobs. She saw firsthand how underrepresented women were in government and found she had a knack for dealing with government agencies to ensure that talented women were hired for high-level positions. Within two years, she had tripled the number of women in these positions from 36 to 130. She also helped more than 1000 women advance in mid-level jobs, many in departments previously dominated entirely by men.

Franklin left the White House in 1973 to become one of the first commissioners and the first Vice President of the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission. In this role, she focused primarily on children, whom she saw as one of the most vulnerable consumer groups in our society. Under her leadership, the commission introduced the first child-resistant medication bottle caps and oversaw industry safety improvements to children’s furniture and toys. She served six years on the commission before joining the faculty of the Wharton School of Business in 1979, but her public service continued. Franklin served four terms as a member of the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations, as an advisor to the Comptroller General of the U.S. and as an alternative representative to the United Nations General Assembly. She also held a number of presidential appointments during this time.

In addition to her public service work, Franklin was approached by several public companies seeking to diversify their boards of directors. She joined the boards of Aetna, the Dow ChemicalCompany and Westinghouse Electric—again, as the only woman on the boards at the time. It was during her early years on the board of Hartford-based Aetna that she met and married her husband, Wallace Barnes, and ultimately came to call Connecticut home.

In 1992, President George H.W. Bush appointed Franklin the 29th U.S. Secretary of Commerce. This made her the highest-ranking woman in the Bush administration and only the 13th woman to serve in the cabinet. During her time in this cabinet post, she greatly increased American exports and opened markets in China, Russia, Japan and Mexico. Her historic mission to China in 1992 normalized commercial relations with that country and removed one of the major sanctions that the U.S. had imposed following the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989: a ban on ministerial contact. She returned from China with a billion dollars in signed contracts for American companies.

Barbara Hackman Franklin has served on the board of directors for 17 public companies.  She has received numerous honors for her work in corporate governance including the John J. McCloy Award for her outstanding contributions to audit excellence, Director of the Year from the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) and has been inducted into the NACD Hall of Fame. She has also been named by Directorship as one of the 100 most influential people in corporate governance and is a regular commentator on international economic matters and corporate governance. She is chair emerita of the Economic Club of New York and the National Association of Corporate Directors and continues to serve on the boards of numerous other organizations including the US-China Business Council, the National Committee on US-China Relations, the National Symphony Orchestra,  and as vice-chair of the board of the National Museum of American History. Franklin has also received many honorary degrees. In 2017, she was named one of the “50 Women Who Made American Political History” by TIME.

In 2011, Franklin’s family established the Barbara Hackman Franklin Fund for Women through the Main Street Community Foundation in Bristol, Conn. The fund will benefit local women and girls in honor of Franklin’s commitment to the advancement and empowerment of women. In 2012, she was the subject of a book by Dr. Leon Stout, A Matter of Simple Justice: The Untold Story of Barbara Hackman Franklin and a Few Good Women, which chronicles her work to advance women in government and which was re-released in 2020 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution

Barbara Hackman Franklin divides her time between Washington, D.C., and Bristol, Conn.