Barbara traces her career from a tax office in high school to audit at KPMG, through private industry, and eventually into construction accounting at Grassi, with a meaningful chapter running her husband's construction equipment practice in between. She explains how seeing business from every angle shapes the advice she gives clients today.

Barbara breaks down the day-to-day work of construction advisory: WIP schedule management, coaching accounting staff, identifying gaps in financial tracking, and making sure owners have the real-time information they need to make decisions, not just a report after the fact.

Barbara explains how she went from being a treasurer for two groups (because, naturally, accountant) to serving in leadership across six industry organizations, and why she doesn't count any of it as work. Her philosophy: if she can help and bring a different perspective, she will.

One of the most genuine moments of the episode: Barbara describes the specific joy she gets from introducing the right people to each other, watching relationships form, and hearing later that a single introduction changed someone's career trajectory. She'd do it as a full-time job if she could.

Barbara openly admits she was never a public speaker,  and yet here she is, on a podcast, advocating for others to say yes before they feel ready. Her advice is simple: the growth lives just past the discomfort, and someone in the room is always grateful you asked the question you were afraid to ask.