Meet Barbara Leuin

Barbara A. Leuin, Ph.D., founder of SOFIA Capital Ventures, has over forty years of professional experience (yeah, I’m that old!) with multiple careers as a business educator, organizational consultant and entrepreneur. Her passion through all of these ventures is to

ignite the creative spark of genius and empower the realization of a person’s dreams.

Trained in classical piano, trombone, ballet and modern dance in her early years, a professional dancer in her twenties, and formerly an active member of an arts community in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Barbara is also an accomplished writer, lecturer, seminar presenter.

Barbara completed her doctorate in natural resource economics in 1978, a time when only five schools in the U.S. offered such a degree. She was hired out of graduate school to work for the regional electric utility company to help computerize their long-range forecasts for energy demand. Through this five-year career, she was a public spokesperson, expert witness and maverick in the company—starting a women’s professional networking organization that grew to 400 members and spanned three companies.

Barbara fell into teaching in 1982 and quickly discovered a gift and passion for experiential education which has stuck with her to today.  While based in economics and business departments, her work spanned all disciplines as she became very much in demand to lead teacher training workshops on experiential education across all disciplines.  During this time, she also became a consultant to non-profit organizations, focusing on revitalization.

In 1993 Barbara decided to make a change into the corporate world, seeking a position in corporate training. She joined a marketing and production company for personal growth seminars and was trained as a facilitator for one of the best personal growth programs offered at the time. 

In 1995, Barbara took this training to the entrepreneurial realm and began her first company to offer business plans and capital formation for start-up ventures.  During this period, Barbara continued to pursue her interest in personal growth, and incorporated Life Path readings and other personal growth tools into her business consulting. She also authored the popular book Planning With A Heart: A Business Planning Book For Women Only. 

In 2003, Barbara’s interest expanded to real estate. She began working with a local mortgage broker to find private investors to fund real estate projects.  Her interest quickly led her to begin her own investing. Moving from San Diego to Colorado Springs in 2005, she became a full-time investor, mentor, coach and trainer in creative real estate.

In 2012, following a shift of private lending into commercial real estate, Barbara established SOFIA Capial Ventures to provide mortgage brokerage and consulting services to commercial real estate investors and developers. Currently, the company has over a billion dollars of funding projects in the pipeline. She has recently authored the e-book Syndicating Made Easy.

Now in the legacy phase of her career, Barbara is available for business and life coaching and business development consulting.