Barbara Sumner has had a long career in film and television and a journalist. She now runs the film production company Cloud South Pictures with her husband, Tom Burstyn. She has produced three feature documentaries, a number of television commercials and instructional films. In 2009 This Way of Life, their documentary movie about a family living simply in the Ruahine Ranges, won awards at film festivals around the world. In 2020 she is enrolled at the IML at Victoria University. She lives in Napier.