Barbara Spiering (she/her) is vice president, Technology Delivery, Product and Accessibility for Starbucks Canada.
In her role, Barbara is responsible for bridging the Canadian market and global technology strategies to ensure stores run smoothly while delivering winning digital partner (employee) and customer experiences. In this role, Barbara is responsible for definition and delivery across all customer and retail platforms, including marketing technology, mobile applications and point of sale (POS). She also drives transformational programs such as next-generation technology in Starbucks stores all over the world. Barbara’s technical product and delivery teams extend customer digital engagement through world-class web and mobile experiences, supported by modern scalable cloud platforms and integrated services to build innovative solutions and enable business capabilities across the global Starbucks enterprise. Her Digital Accessibility team ensures Starbucks customers engage in a meaningful and inclusive experience in their digital assets.
Barbara has been a partner since 2005, and a technology leader for Starbucks digital platforms since their inception. Throughout her tenure, Barbara has driven vision, strategy and execution for the global marketing technology organization and has led the development of applications to support key revenue-generating programs, including My Starbucks Rewards (now Starbucks Rewards), Starbucks Gift Cards and Personalization. Barbara has helped modernized Starbucks operations, leading transformations from waterfall to agile methodologies and adopting a product operating model at a global scale.
During her time at Starbucks, Barbara has demonstrated a commitment to advancing the careers of others and enhancing Starbucks strong culture. Barbara is currently the executive sponsor for the Starbucks Canada Pan-Asian Partner Network where she helps to ensure partner network success through mentoring and strategic coaching.
Barbara has a Masters of International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Phoenix, Arizona and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Central Washington University. She lives in Seattle with her husband Tadd and their two sons, in addition to two dogs, two cats and a small flock of chickens. Whether at work or on the go, Barbara’s Starbucks order is almost always a Flat White.