TENSO BARTERRE GROUP

Optimizing Human Potential as Stewards of Nature

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Karen Halliburton Barber

Karen is Executive Vice Chairman of cross-border market strategy and sustainable development advisory Tenso Barterre Group. She brings leadership experience in market, economic and business development strategy and execution, including marketing, communications and funding, across the food, health, environment and education sectors.

Through cross-border M&A, strategic alliance and intercultural advisory work at TBG, Karen focuses on growing enterprises and communities and ensuring equitable access to sustainable economic and societal benefits including 'food and nature as medicine' systems and wellness experiences.

Karen has empowered top corporate, non-profit and public policy decision makers in the US and abroad to secure and grow market opportunities and resources, highlighting health and sustainability as key drivers of US and global market demand. A strategic communicator, she has been featured by numerous leading national and trade media in the US and globally.

Karen served as Senior Analyst and Assistant Vice President responsible for strategic market analysis and communications covering the US and North American produce and horticulture sector for leading global financial institution Rabobank Group. She also served as Senior Vice President of The RiceX Company, a medical food and nutrition innovator. As Deputy Director and Foreign Service Officer at the American Embassy in Tokyo and Agricultural Economist in the US Foreign Agricultural Service, Karen directed multi-million dollar marketing and commercial trade operations, funding and guiding US businesses abroad.

As a Mansfield Fellow, she pioneered as the first US official to work within the senior ranks of the Japan Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries, managed food procurement at the Saison Group retail and hospitality conglomerate, and organized Japan’s environmental technology exhibition at the UN COP 3 climate change conference in Kyoto. At TBG, she continues to work to ensure equitable access to healthy food systems, promote environmental justice, safeguard the oceans and protect forest watersheds.

Karen earned dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Economics and Political Science/International Public Administration and a Master of Science in Agricultural Economics from Oklahoma State University.



Group Leadership
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