Despite having a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and a couple of decades of work experience in human resources, Kathy Barnett still describes herself as an entrepreneur rather than a successful businesswoman.
In addition to growing her own business, Barnett, 45, has devoted her time to helping girls and young women.
Barnett, who grew up in Columbia and still lives there, is the founder of People Strategy Partners, a human resources development company that helps businesses act in more people-oriented, philanthropic and socially responsible ways.
She has a particular passion for helping females, which got her involved about a decade ago in the Women’s Giving Circle of Howard County, a philanthropic group. Barnett started and still runs the Young Women’s Giving Circle, which teaches high school girls such skills as fundraising and advocating for nonprofits. She also is heavily involved in the organization’s Girls Who Code program, which teaches computer programming to middle- and high-school girls, and How Girls Code, a similar program for girls in elementary school.
In its first year, the Young Women’s Giving Circle raised about $1,000 through bake sales and restaurant nights, and it gave the money to the county’s domestic violence center and Girls on the Run of Central Maryland, which uses running to encourage girls to be healthy and confident. Five years later, the group has moved beyond simple fundraising, Barnett says, and visited several nonprofit organizations, where they’ve gotten involved in programming and advocacy and looked for mentors.
“These girls are interested in helping; whatever their career will be, they want to make a difference,” Barnett says.
“She’s been incredibly valuable — her enthusiasm has really engaged these girls,” Megan Bruno, Women’s Giving Circle chairwoman, says of Barnett. “Everything in her life is really around helping women and girls.”
Barnett’s passion might be inherited in part. Her great-grandparents were missionaries, her grandfather was raised by nuns and her mother was active in Howard County’s robust nonprofit world. “I come from a long line of givers,” she says.
But her drive to help young women also stems from her own struggles as a teenager.
“Middle school’s rough. High school’s rough,” says Barnett, who has a 17-year-old stepson and two daughters, 11 and 7. “Things like the Twitter suicide stories and the stories of kids losing hope, they resonate with me.”
So her mission is to make young people, especially girls, know that someone cares and, at the same time, teach them the value of caring.
“For me, it’s all about empathy,” she says. “If we just show them that a business cares, or that one mentor cares … that can make a difference. We can create a more caring society.”
Barnett intends to keep doing her share. She plans to help launch a new initiative that will give high school girls hands-on experience in starting their own company. And she hopes to build her idea for growing community consciousness, HoCo Be You, into an incubator for young philanthropists, entrepreneurs and leaders.