Board Member

Co-Founder / CEO, ioby

Erin Barnes is the Executive Director of ioby, which mobilizes neighbors who have good ideas to become powerful citizen leaders who plan, fund and make positive change in their own neighborhoods. In 2012, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded Erin Barnes and her co-founders at ioby the Jane Jacobs Medal for New Technology and Innovation. Erin met her co-founders while in graduate school at the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Before ioby, Erin Barnes was an editor at Men’s Journal magazine, freelance writer, and contributor to Al Gore’s book Our Choice. She conducted field research on water and fisheries markets in Nicaragua and the Amazon, and worked as a community organizer at the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition. She has a B.A. in English and American Studies from the University of Virginia and an M.E.M from Yale University. Erin lives in Brooklyn and serves on the Boards of EcoDistricts and Resource Media. She is one of the Obama Foundation’s inaugural 2018 Fellows.