Barbara Hackman Franklin
President and CEO, Barbara Franklin Enterprises
Barbara Hackman Franklin is an American government official, corporate director, and international business advisor and executive who served as the 29th U.S. Secretary of Commerce from 1992 to 1993 to President George H. W. Bush. In the 1970s she headed the effort by President Richard Nixon to recruit and appoint women for high-level government positions; following this, she was appointed one of the first Commissioners and the first Vice Chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Altogether, she has served in the administrations of five U.S. Presidents. She has received the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service (2006), was inducted into the Government Executive Government Hall of Fame (2023) and has been named one of the “50 Women who Made American Political History” (TIME Magazine, 2017).
As Secretary of Commerce, Franklin served as the highest-ranking woman in the George H.W. Bush administration and the 13th woman to serve in the US Cabinet. Her market-opening initiatives in China, Russia, Japan and Mexico helped to increase American exports during this time, a major administrative goal. She led a Presidential mission to China in 1992 that normalized commercial relations, removed the ban on ministerial contact that the U.S. had imposed following the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989, and brought back $1 billion in signed contracts for American companies. Trade with China grew dramatically in the ensuing years as did foreign investment. In 2016, she was awarded a “Lifetime Achievement Award in US-China Relations” by the US-China Policy Foundation.
Secretary Franklin’s public service began in 1971, when she was recruited by President Richard Nixon to bring more qualified women into high-level policy-making government positions. As Staff Assistant to the President, she led this effort which nearly quadrupled the number of women in policy-making positions, and created a talent bank of qualified women for future openings. More than half of these positions to which women were appointed during this time were previously held only by men, and the number of women on boards and commissions increased as well. Her White House story is told in the 2012 book by Lee Stout, A Matter of Simple Justice: the Untold Story of Barbara Hackman Franklin and A Few Good Women.
Following this success, President Nixon appointed her one of the first Commissioners of the newly created US Consumer Product Safety Commission. There, she focused on safety for children, advocating a national policy on cancer, and pioneering the use of cost/benefit analysis in regulatory activity (1973-78). Additionally, Franklin served four terms on the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations, by appointments of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and as Alternate Representative to the 44th United Nations General Assembly by appointment of President George H. W. Bush.
After her public service in the 1970s, Franklin returned to the private sector; as a senior fellow at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania; as CEO of her own private international consulting firm, Barbara Franklin Enterprises; and as a board director. In the early years of her board service, she was in many cases the first or only woman on the board. She has served on the boards of 14 public companies, such as Aetna, Dow Chemical Westinghouse, Black and Decker, and Nordstrom, as well as three private companies. She has chaired six public company audit committees and was known as a noted expert on corporate governance, auditing, and financial reporting. She also served as chair of governance committees, as lead director, and as a non-executive chair. She served as chairman of the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) during a period of significant growth in membership and vitality, and in 2014 was inducted in the NACD Directorship Hall of Fame.
Secretary Franklin is chair emerita of the Economic Club of New York and past president of the Management Executives’ Society. She is a past board member of the US-China Business Council, the Atlantic Council, and is board member emerita of the Richard Nixon Foundation. Currently, she is vice chair of the National Museum of American History, board member of the National Symphony Orchestra and the National Committee on US-China Relations, a longtime member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a trustee of the George and Barbara Bush Foundation. Franklin is a founding member of Executive Women in Government (1973) and the Women’s Forum of Washington (now International Women’s Forum) in 1981.
Franklin’s private sector career began when she was fresh out of Harvard Business School and prior to joining the White House staff, when she worked at the Singer Company as manager of environmental analysis and at First National City Bank (now Citibank) as assistant vice president in a new corporate planning staff. In 1970, when the passage of the Bank Holding Company Act Amendments that restricted the activities of bank holding companies came as a surprise to the Bank, Franklin was called on to create and then head the Bank’s first government relations department.
Born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Franklin graduated with distinction from the Pennsylvania State University and was one of the first women graduates of the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. Among her many honors, awards, and honorary degrees, she has received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Penn State and the Alumni Achievement Award from Harvard Business School. She was inducted into the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame in 2013 and the Financial Executives International Hall of Fame in 2015. She was married to Wallace Barnes, chairman and CEO of Barnes Group (retired), until his passing in 2020.
