2025 Northwestern Alumni Medal
Barbara Stewart ’85, ’95 MBA
Corporate, government, and nonprofit leader
Barbara Stewart is a change agent who is passionate about service, leadership, and philanthropy. With 40 years of corporate, government, and nonprofit leadership experience, Stewart provides significant perspective and strategic thinking to the organizations she leads, advises, or serves. From 2018 through 2021, she was the presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed CEO of AmeriCorps—the federal agency that supports service and volunteerism. During her tenure, she led the agency through a period of transition and transformation, addressing many of the organization’s long-standing operational challenges and preparing AmeriCorps for future growth.
Previously, Stewart held leadership roles in the private sector, including nearly a decade as managing director at JPMorgan Chase, and in Illinois state government. She has extensive bipartisan experience working with elected officials at the federal, state, and local levels.
In 2012, Stewart and her husband, Peter Bowe, cofounded the Bowe Stewart Foundation with the mission to strengthen civic education and civil engagement and to close the opportunity gap. A nonprofit board leader, she currently serves on the national advisory boards of Service Year Alliance and The Policy Circle, as a member of the University of Chicago Graham School Advisory Council, and as a trustee of the American Battlefield Trust and the Civic Federation of Chicago. Stewart has served on the Maryland Governor’s Commission on Service and Volunteerism since 2024. She was on the board of ZeroFox, a Nasdaq-listed external cybersecurity company, from 2023 to 2024.
Stewart is a member of the Kellogg Executive Women’s Network and the N Club at Northwestern. She previously served on the Northwestern Alumni Association Board, as president of the NU Club of Chicago, and on her undergraduate Reunion committees.
Stewart earned her BA in political science from Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. In 2023, she was awarded an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Knox College.