Barbara Ann Cassani, CBE, is an American businesswoman. She was the founder under British Airways of budget airline Go Fly and was the first leader of London's bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics. During her tenure the bid corporation gained increasing support from the British public and political class.

Barbara Ann Cassani (CBE) is an American businesswoman. She was the founder under British Airways of budget airline Go Fly and was the first leader of London's bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Barbara was born in Boston where she studied at Mount Holyoke College, graduating magna cum laude with a BA (Hons) International Relations in 1982. She is also a former trustee of Mount Holyoke. She earned a Master's degree, again in International Relations, from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. In 2004 she was awarded an honorary degree from Cranfield University.

Upon graduation from University in 1984, she worked as a Management Consultant for Coopers & Lybrand before moving to work in the U.S. operation of British Airways. There she worked in sales, marketing, and on the team that integrated Dan-Air into BA's business.

In 1997, facing increasing competition from budget airlines Ryanair and easyJet, British Airways decided to found its own budget offering, Go Fly.The company began operations in 1998 and reached profitability two years later. In 2001 Barbara led a management buyout of the company (with most of the funding coming from venture capital firm 3i), and became its first Chief Executive.In July 2002. Barbara, having watched the value of Go increase spectacularly from 110m to 374m in less than a year, was powerless to prevent a takeover of the airline by rivals easyJet.

Following the takeover of Go, and unsure of her next venture, Barbara bought, transformed and sold her local pub in Barnes. An extended holiday in Australia followed, where she began work on a book about her experiences at Go, Go - An Airline Adventure, which won a number of business publishing awards the following year.

In 2002, she was awarded the Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year award.

In October 2003 Barbara became a non-executive director of retailer Marks & Spencer, a position she relinquished when she accepted the olympic position. In June 2003 she was appointed to chair London's bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Barbara led the bid through the first phase of the two-stage bidding process. The bid's master plan was submitted to the International Olympic Committee in the spring of 2004, and on the strength of it London was selected as one of the five candidate cities. In May 2004 she announced she was stepping down as chairman in favor of olympic gold medalist and politician Lord Sebastian Coe. However, she stayed on with the bid, serving under Coe as Vice Chairman responsible for technical aspects of the bid.

On July 6th 2005 The International Olympic Committee awarded London Bid with the rights to host the Games of the XXX Olympiad.

On September 24 2007, Cassani became the new chairman of the board at Vueling Airlines.

Barbara appears regulary as a business and management speaker on the public speaking circuit.