Barbara Phifer passionately believes in serving others and building strong communities, She believes every person needs access to health care, every child should have access to quality education, and that people should have meaningful productive jobs that pay a living wage. She asks your support to put these beliefs in action through sound policies and laws.
After graduating from Hickman High School, Columbia, Missouri, Cornell College in Iowa, and St. Paul School of Theology, Barbara served as a pastor in the United Methodist Church. She served congregations for 41 years throughout Missouri, except for five years in Montevideo, Uruguay. She retired from pastoral ministry in 2019.
She is married, and the mother of five and grandmother of seven. While her work required to move around, she considered Kirkwood home, and has lived there for 17 of the last 30 years, and now makes her permanent home there.
She served many years as a board member and president of Accion Social Communitaria, a non profit providing health care to medically underserved families in St. Louis. Through the Carter Center, an international NGO, she served as an election observer in Nicaragua in 1990. In 2019, she worked with her local church, the Pattonville School District and Youth In Need to create a counseling center for children and youth who have been affected by the landfill in the Bridgeton area.
For many years, Barbara has served as an interpreter for short-term medical teams in Central and South America.