Barbara Schott has been working in international development for 17 years as project manager and technical expert with bi- and multilateral donors like EU, GIZ, DfID, DANIDA, and others in Africa, Asia and the Balkans. Her main areas of expertise are local economic development and responsible tourism planning and development.

Since 2019, Barbara is working in Kenya, Africa. She's part of an EU-funded project called GreenTour Kenya under the SWITCH Africa Green programme and started her own company with Kenyan partner Ms Angela Njehia, advising on sustainability and responsible tourism planning in December 2019. Her recent work entails trainings on various topics of sustainability in Kenya and Ethiopia. She's also been engaged voluntarily in the Oloolua Forest conservation near Nairobi.

She worked in Myanmar from 2013-2018 in various roles and has been engaging with Myanmar civil society throughout this time.
Barbara has been facilitating local economic development and community development processes mostly in ethnic minority areas and Self-Administered Zones (SAZ). These assignments involved also organisational development of CBOs in a post-conflict area.
Her work included also a number of studies/ reports, qualitative studies on the success and failure of Community-Based Tourism (CBT).
Barbara is well acquainted with all aspects of PCM. Setting up monitoring mechanisms, evaluating project progress and building capacity with partner organisations have been an essential part of her work as project manager throughout her career.
Coordinating and liaising with stakeholders, including government, civil society and private sector is one of her key strengths, including participatory approaches to regional economic development in various regions in Myanmar, particularly for ecotourism and community-based tourism development.
Barbara is co-founder of the Myanmar Community-Based Tourism Network, in partnership with ActionAid Myanmar that aims to bring together Private Sector, Civil Society and communities by providing a learning and exchange platform. Integrating learning and knowledge management is fundamental for long-term empowerment and capacity building and helps to mitigate change.
She is also co-founder of the grassroots movement Thant Myanmar, which actively supports awareness raising on the use of single-use plastic items, provides advisory on policy level and promotes a plastic free tourism industry.