Barbara Stilwell is a nurse, health visitor and primary care family nurse practitioner, with a decades long interest in public health and in supporting health worker performance through a range of education and practice initiatives. She has worked for the World Health Organization and for non-profit organizations as a technical specialist in workforce development and education, has lived in Switzerland, the USA, as well as countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Barbara returned to the UK in 2018 to lead the global advocacy campaign, Nursing Now from 2018, through the challenges of the pandemic, until it ended in 2021. She is now working as a consultant on a global research and implementation project on nurse leadership as well as publishing a new book on global health and nursing.