PROFILE: BARBARA BURTNER She's 58 and embarking on a new adventure

By ROGER G. SMITH
CITY HALL REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Barbara Burtner thought about joining the Peace Corps after taking a buyout and leaving her job as city finance director in the summer of 2002.
If she were a doctor, Burtner would've liked to be part of something like Doctors Without Borders. Helping people in exotic locales seemed appealing.
Really, though, the notion was more fanciful than practical, Burtner thought. She is hardly an international traveler; she has never been overseas.
Then she saw an ad in an accounting trade magazine a couple months ago. An international consulting company needed accounting and financial management advisers to work in South Africa.
"I just wanted some adventure in my life," Burtner said. "It just sounded perfect for me."
Experience
Later this week, the former North Side resident now living in Florida leaves the country for an 18-month stint in a spot she never expected: Rustenburg, South Africa.
At age 58 and single, the adventure is the right opportunity at the right time.
"I couldn't imagine a more exciting thing," Burtner said.
She's spent the time since leaving city hall working on short-term accounting jobs and visiting out-of-state relatives. She keeps her house in Youngstown but moved to Florida about a year ago, where she lived for about five years in the 1980s.
She didn't find the type of work she really loved during her time off.
Then she saw the ad.
Burtner will work for Canadian company Cowater Inc. The Ottawa-based firm provides technical and professional expertise to developing countries in such matters as water, sanitation, financial management and accounting. The World Bank hired Cowater to help the South African National Treasury create uniform municipal and national accounting systems.
She is assigned to Rustenburg to use her 16 years of city experience as accounting manager and, later, finance director.
Work will be the easy part, Burtner said. She'll be doing what she knows and working with a mayor, council and a staff setup, just like in Youngstown. Bureaucracies can't be much different, be it American or South African, she said.
Lifestyle
Rustenburg is an area of about 300,000 people about a 90-minute drive from Pretoria. She doesn't know much else about the area but isn't worried.
Westernized cities such as Pretoria and Johannesburg aren't too far. There will be some friendly faces. Among other advisers she'll work with are former finance directors from Kansas City, Mo., Vancouver, British Columbia, and Winston-Salem, N.C.
South Africa largely stays out of international politics, so Burtner isn't worried about terrorism. The transition there from apartheid to democracy is a far larger concern, she said.
Burtner said she's embracing the inevitable culture shock. She describes herself as scared, anxious and excited.
She is looking forward to experiencing Freedom Day on April 27, the 10th-anniversary celebration of South Africa's break from apartheid.
Burtner described the country as "a new democracy, only with technology."
Burtner's move didn't surprise her good friend Mary June Tartan, who works at the city Community Development Agency.
Burtner has always been independent, Tartan said. It's good to see her taking risks that some people think are limited to their younger years, Tartan said.
"You should always have new things happening for you," she said. "We can still do that when we're older."
Tartan, who has traveled in Europe and to Japan to visit her daughter, is expecting at least one hysterical phone call from South Africa before Burtner settles in.
She wants Burtner to keep a journal to remember the myriad of experiences that might otherwise be forgotten.
"It will be fun hearing her reactions to things," Tartan said.
rgsmith@vindy.com