Barbara Gibson (BA’71)
Lifetime Achievement Award
As the highest honour presented by the University of Saskatchewan Alumni Association, this award recognizes an alumnus/alumna for an outstanding lifetime of personal and professional accomplishments and contributions to the social, cultural, and economic well-being of society in their field(s) of endeavor.
As a highly regarded career diplomat, Barbara Gibson (BA’71) served Canada in influential positions around the globe for more than three decades. Through her expertise on the world stage, Gibson advanced the crucial role that diplomacy plays in the pursuit of Canada’s national interests and in building global consensus for a rules-based international order.
Gibson was born and raised in Saskatoon, where she attended Evan Hardy Collegiate before studying at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Arts and Science and earning her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1971. Gibson’s international career began shortly thereafter, when she began working for the New Zealand Department of Trade and Industry in 1974 and then subsequently for organizations based in Belgium, the UK, and Nigeria. In 1983 she joined the Canadian Foreign Service and went on to serve with professionalism, excellent judgement, and dedication in a variety of key roles, including in 2014 as the director of the Middle East Division of the Canadian Department of External Affairs (now Global Affairs Canada), which included managing Canada’s relations with Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.
Prior to that, from 1985 to 1989, Gibson served as Ambassador Stephen Lewis’s executive assistant at Canada’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York before being assigned to the Canadian Embassy in Washington from 1992 to 1995. After serving as a special advisor to Ambassador Robert Fowler during Canada’s term on the United Nations Security Council in 1999 and 2000, Gibson was recognized with a Merit Award in 2000 for her “exceptional and distinguished contribution to effectiveness and efficiency” of the Canadian public service. After that, from 2004 to 2008, she served in Vienna, Austria, as Canada’s ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which fosters peace and stability across Europe and Eurasia on a wide range of issues from arms control to human rights and peaceful resolution of conflict.
From 2015 through 2016, Gibson was seconded by the Canadian government to the International Peace Institute (IPI) in New York. The IPI, an independent, non-profit organization working to strengthen inclusive multilateralism, hosted the Independent Commission on Multilateralism (ICM), which assessed how the United Nations-based multilateral system could be made more effective in addressing 21st-century challenges. Having joined the ICM as a senior advisor, Gibson was subsequently appointed as the ICM’s acting secretary general and then secretary general. She co-led the ICM’s final report, Pulling Together: The Multilateral System and Its Future, an ambitious two-year project.
Gibson is a proud Canadian who, in her various diplomatic roles, worked tirelessly to advance the Canadian values of democracy, human rights, respect for the rule of law, and understanding of different cultures and faiths. As a volunteer with the Methodist Church in New York and Vienna, she has been active in promoting social justice and human welfare through various church groups and activities, including helping to pack and provide food and supplies for unhoused children, women, and men and others in need in the community. While Gibson currently lives in Vienna with her husband, retired United Nations official Franz Baumann, the spouses enjoy spending summers at the Gibson family cottage at Emma Lake, Sask. – often with their daughter, Hannah, who also lives and works in Vienna.