The CEO Of Girl Scouts Talks Leadership, Legacy, & The Best Way To Eat A Thin Mint

If you ask Bonnie Barczykowski what she does, you’ll hear a lot about empowering young women. As CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA, she’s helping girls across the country discover what’s possible — and actually go for it.

“What I do at Girl Scouting is help, across the nation, young girls get those opportunities, whether they’re what I call ‘little moments in time’ or they’re longer term experiences,” Barczykowski tells Her Campus. “All of that impacts girls’ lives, just like people impacted mine, to help them explore things they didn’t even know [were] possible.”

It’s a pretty incredible role — but her path to the C-suite didn’t exactly follow a straight line. Barczykowski actually started out as a teacher. After graduating from Lindenwood University with a degree in education, she worked at an elementary school, where she taught first grade for one year. When she relocated from St. Louis to Washington D.C. after getting married, she took up a part-time job at US Airways while getting her teaching certification to work in Virginia. Instead, she ended up spending 13 years in customer service, training, sales, and marketing positions with that airline — roles that unexpectedly introduced her to the business world. 

“I found that I had this absolute love of sales and marketing, and I decided to go back and get my master’s in business,” Barczykowski says. Once she got her MBA from her alma mater, Barczykowski was fully in business mode. She spent 11 years with Curves, an international chain of women’s health and fitness clubs, where she owned and operated five locations. But it was when Barczykowski was asked to join her local Girl Scout board of directors that things really took a turn. In 2012, she became the chief operating officer for the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri (and, since she didn’t participate in the program as a child, she became an honorary adult Girl Scout). 

Barczykowski quickly realized this wasn’t just another job — she had found a mission that would shape the rest of her career. After about a year in the COO position, Barczykowski became the CEO of Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri, a role she held for over nine years. 

Her time leading at the local level let her see the company’s long-term impacts up close. “What I’m most proud of is in the decade I was there, I actually got to step back and watch our young kindergartners [go to] high school, or high schoolers out working in their careers,” Barczykowski says. “The thing that I absolutely love helping girls realize is, ‘Choose what you want to do and be today, and be open with how that will evolve over time.’”

Little did Barczykowski know, this step was only part of her own career evolution — one that would lead her to the national level. “Being the CEO of Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri, we’re a microcosm of the whole nation … We have girls with all different backgrounds, all different beliefs — they come from so many different places. That microcosm of leading in a local council has been so instrumental of now being at the national [level],” Barczykowski says. 

So when the opportunity arose for Barczykowski to step into the CEO position at GSUSA about three years ago, it felt like a natural next move. “Coming to GSUSA, it was that combination of governance, of operation, and then that overarching leadership that I say helps me every day in the role that I have now.”

Now as the leader of GSUSA, Barczykowski is busy. Her days start early — we’re talking 6:30 a.m. at her desk. (Being a dedicated runner, she’ll either squeeze in a workout before she gets to the office, or late at night once the workday is done.) Then it’s off to meetings, typically with the stakeholders who contribute across the organization. Even with a packed schedule, her focus never strays far from GSUSA’s mission. “Every meeting we have, every discussion we make, for me, it’s about making sure that it’s all surrounded by what’s best and right for the girls that we serve,” Barczykowski says.

Of course, leading a company this impactful comes with challenges — particularly when it comes to getting people to understand exactly who the Girl Scouts are and what they do. While many people associate the organization with their famous cookies, Barczykowski emphasizes that Girl Scouting is about far more than just those sweet treats. In fact, even the cookies themselves are about much more than what’s in the box. She wants everyone to know that GSUSA is “the largest girl entrepreneurship program in the world.” With that in mind, she encourages people to engage directly with the girls behind the cookie booth: “Ask the girls more questions!” she says, particularly about what they’ll do with the cookie proceeds and how it’ll impact their troop and their community. She also shared that GSUSA is always “working three years out” on the cookies, highlighting just how much time goes into the innovation of a new cookie that many only see for a few weeks out of the year. 

For Barczykowski, it all comes down to this: Success doesn’t follow one path. “I hope that what I’ve been able to do actually shows our young girls to go for the stars,” Barczykowski says. “To start as an elementary school teacher … and then be able to have the different paths that I’ve had over many many years, to get me to where I am today, that in itself, I hope, is helpful for young women.”

She leaves off with a final tip from an insider — pair ice cream and chocolate syrup with her personal favorite Girl Scout cookie, Thin Mints — as well as one more piece of advice: “You’re never too old to be a Girl Scout.”

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