Business Manager
Barbara Peitsch is the Senior Project Manager and the Business Manager for the Fastest Path to Zero Initiative. She is currently a key contributor to the international Perspectives on the Export of Advanced Nuclear Technologies (PEANuT) tool, and led a workshop in Japan this past spring on the potential contributions of advanced nuclear energy technologies to economic development and job creation in Japan and the U.S. Prior to FPtZ, Ms. Peitsch was a Program Director in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, where she managed several State Department/USAID funded exchange and capacity building projects in Central and Eastern Europe, South and Central Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa, most recently focusing on entrepreneurship and private sector development and involving survey-based research. Barbara’s additional work at the university included proposal writing, management of subcontractors, technical experts, and other partners, and all other aspects of successful project implementation and oversight. Barbara has led many training workshops and seminars on international finance and investment. She also served as the Finance Director of BayhDole25 from 2006-2010, an NGO focusing on biotechnology, and on the board of the Arab American Women’s Business Council from 2008-2011.
Prior to joining the University of Michigan, Ms. Peitsch headed the Emerging European Fixed Income and Macroeconomic Research Department of Santander Investment, the London-based investment banking group of Banco Santander Central Hispano. Ms. Peitsch also worked as an international commercial banker, employed by First National Bank of Chicago, now JP Morgan Chase, from 1985-1991. Ms. Peitsch has more than 8 years of multilateral agency/US government experience. She worked for the OECD in Paris from 1992-1997, where she was responsible for foreign direct investment capacity-building programs in the non-member countries of Central and Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union. In 1991-1992, she participated in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Technical Assistance Program to promote financial sector development in former East bloc countries. She was a resident of Budapest, Hungary, where she advised the Chairman of the Hungarian Credit Bank on measures to be taken prior to privatization.
Ms. Peitsch enjoys hiking, sailing, reading and spending time in her garden. She has a Master’s Degree in Public Policy and an A.B. in Economics from the University of Michigan.