Deborah G. Barger

A graduate of Buffalo State, Deborah Gallagher Barger completed her bachelor’s degree in
Communications in 1976. In the fall of 1978, she left for Washington, DC to pursue a career in
journalism and later, a master’s degree in Public Administration at American University (1993).
She also completed post-graduate courses at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, the
Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern, and the University of Maryland.
In 1978, she became managing editor of the Armed Forces Journal International, a defense policy
magazine. While a journalist, she wrote and published numerous articles, traveled frequently,
made three parachute jumps into the Atlantic Ocean, and flew alongside pilots and crews of an
F-15 fighter, B-52 bomber, and several helicopters. On the ground, she test drove the Army’s
newest tank and crawled through mud pits at the Jungle Operations Training Course in
Panama. At sea she landed aboard an aircraft carrier and, somewhat more precariously, hung
from a rope-line to be transferred between ships heaving in the frigid North Sea. She also found
time to marry fellow editor, Millard Barger.
In 1986, she decided to leave journalism for a career in government. For the next nearly 30
years, she served in senior positions at a number of federal agencies. She worked in the
Pentagon as a speechwriter, had two tours on Capitol Hill, a three-year assignment at NATO in
Brussels, and a year-long fellowship at RAND, a Washington area “think-tank.”
During her time in government service, she won numerous awards, including recognition by
President George W. Bush for her work on a Presidential Executive Order, and by Senator
Susan Collins for her work on legislation responding to the findings of the 9/11 Commission.
She also received a Distinguished Service Medal at the end of her career, as well as a
meritorious service award from President Obama for “professionalism exemplifying the highest
standards of public service.”
After retiring from the federal government in 2015, she began her “encore career” as a blogger
and writer of historical fiction. In 2023, she published her first novel, Virgin Snow, the story of a
girl growing up on the West Side of Buffalo.