Faith Winter, Chair - Faith is the National Field Director for the White House Project and current City Councilor in Westminster. She provides training, inspiration and empowerment to promote women’s political leadership in Colorado and the Southwest region. Faith has helped train women who are now serving on city councils, school boards and state legislatures. She has been organizing and working on campaigns for the past six years. Doing environmental work, she led a team of over 100 young people that turned out 93,000 young voters in 2004. Faith also led over a dozen clean energy campaigns that generated 2 million dollars to purchase wind and solar power. In 2004, Faith was named one of 30 people under 30 showing political leadership by the Youth Vote Coalition. Faith loves organizing because she believes the best way to create change is by building power through people. She also has fun doing it, because a job isn’t worth doing unless you laugh once in a while.
Michele Christiansen, Treasurer - Michele is the Operations Manager of the Colorado Health Institute, a nonprofit organization that serves as a comprehensive source of health data resources and policy analysis. Prior to joining CHI, Michele was Marketing Coordinator for Rothberg, Tamburini & Windsor, an environmental engineering company that provides services to the water and wastewater industries. Michele holds a B.S. in International Business and Marketing with a minor in Spanish from the University of Minnesota . Her love of the mountains and adventure drove Michele to move to Colorado in 2001. She now enjoys her free time hiking, snowboarding, rafting and camping in the Colorado Rockies.
Dusti Gurule, Secretary - Dusti is the Executive Director of the Latina Initiative. Dusti, a Denver native, spent the majority of her childhood as a student at Escuela Tlatelolco, the school founded by the Crusade for Justice, the Denver Chicano social justice organization of the 1960-70s. She went on to receive her Bachelor Degree in Chicano Studies at Metropolitan State College of Denver and received a Master of Nonprofit Management from Regis University as a Colorado Trust Fellow.
Dusti is dedicated to serving the Latino community on issues that affect social change and civic involvement. She is an active participant in organizing and policy reform on a variety of issues, including Latina civic engagement and economic justice/civil rights. She serves on the board of the Women’s Lobby of Colorado, is a current commissioner on the Colorado Pay Equity Commission and is a Faculty Leadership Coach for the Colorado Center for Progressive Leadership program. Dusti is an alum the Circle of Latina Leadership and serves as a mentor in the program. Dusti was named one of ‘50 for the Future’ by The Colorado Statesman in 2007 and received a Civil Rights Award from NEWSED CDC in May of 2006.
Jen Caltrider - Award-winning television producer Jen Caltrider brings journalistic instinct and know-how to CCVEF. A network producer for CNN, specializing in technology journalism, Jen traveled the United States to cover the latest in high-tech happenings. With accurate investigative research and diligence, Jen entered the hidden world of computer hackers and provided viewers rare glimpses of these secretive people and their incredible skills.
Working as the Executive Producer at Denver, Colorado based ProgressNow since 2005, Jen is recognized as a pioneer in the use new media for online organizing. Her online videos, viewed by millions, have been covered by the NY Times, MSNBC, CBS News and many others. Jen designs and coordinates new media campaigns, utilizing all the web has to offer to fight for causes ranging from justice for a murdered transgender teenager, to helping citizens in Longmont, Colorado win a rare victory in the civic fight against mega-church expansion in their community.
Described as creative, strategic and personal, Jen understands how to take all aspects of new media and turn them into a story to help better communities everywhere.
John Loewy - John Loewy is an attorney living in Denver and Breckenridge, Colorado. He is a graduate of Miami University and of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.
He has served in a number of government positions including as a special assistant in the White House Office of Energy Policy and Planning, as counsel to the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology, counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and as assistant to the director of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. He also served as chief of staff in the Oregon State Senate and as a government affairs advisor in private practice in Portland, Oregon. He was a founding investor and consultant to Digimarc, a successful high-tech startup and now pursues investment opportunities in early-stage business ventures.
Current civic involvement includes serving on the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission and on the Board of Trustees of the National Repertory Orchestra. He is a member of the advisory committee for the Colorado College “State of the Rockies” project. He has served on other boards and advisory committees including the Board of Visitors for the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin.