Daniel W. Drezner is professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.  He is the co-director of Fletcher’s Russia and Eurasia program.  Prior to Fletcher, he taught at the University of Chicago and the University of Colorado at Boulder. 

He has previously held positions with Civic Education Project, the RAND Corporation and the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and received fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, German Marshall Fund of the United States, Council on Foreign Relations, and Harvard University.  Drezner has written seven books, including The Ideas Industry and All Politics is Global, and edited three others, including The Uses and Abuses of Weaponized Interdependence.  

He has published articles in numerous scholarly journals as well as in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs, and has been a regular columnist for Foreign Policy and the Washington Post.  He received his B.A. in political economy from Williams College and an M.A. in economics and Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University.  He co-hosts the Space the Nation podcast with Ana Marie Cox and publishes the newsletter Drezner’s World.   

Dr. Alison Nordt is the Director for Space Science and Instrumentation at Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center. She is responsible for developing and operating missions that provide observational data to advance space science knowledge. Her work involves maturing technology to support current and future space-based telescopes and instruments. She is currently the Principal Investigator for TechMAST (Technology Maturation for Astrophysics Space Telescopes) and related internal research and development efforts. Dr. Nordt is a member of the Science Technology Architecture Review Team that will guide devlopment activities for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO).

Previously, Dr. Nordt was the senior manager for Astrophysics and held several roles on the NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera for the Webb Telescope) program including Principal Engineer, Program Manager and Integrated Product Team Lead. She was responsible for the design, development, testing and delivery of the NIRCam instrument including optics, structures, mechanisms, electronics and software. She also held responsibility for programmatic performance including cost and schedule execution and post-delivery support.

Dr. Nordt holds Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University and a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University. She is an AIAA Associate Fellow, member of the International Academy of Astronautics, serves on the Board of the Planetary Science Institute and was named the 2023 AIAA Engineer of the Year.

Sophia Rosenfeld is Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History and chair of the History Department at the University of Pennsylvania.  She is the author of A Revolution in Language (2001); Common Sense: A Political History (2011), which won the Mark Lynton History Prize and the Society for the History of the Early Republic Book Prize; and Truth and Democracy: A Short History (2019), as well as co-editor of the six- volume Cultural History of Ideas (2022), which was recently named the best Humanities reference work of the year by the Association of American Publishers.  Her work has been translated into many languages and supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Studies (Princeton), the Mellon Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. 

She was previously on the History faculty at Yale University and the University of Virginia and has held visiting professorships at the University of Virginia School of Law and the EHESS in Paris.  In 2022, she held the Kluge Chair in Countries and Cultures of the North at the Library of Congress and was also named  Officier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French government.  Her current book project, The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life, is forthcoming with Princeton University Press next winter.  She also continues to write and to speak in a wide variety of venues about the state of contemporary democracy and the challenges of free speech.  Her essays and reviews on these subjects can be found in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Nation, among other outlets.   

Dr. Paul Spiegel, a Canadian physician and epidemiologist, is one of the few  humanitarians in the world that both responds to and researches  humanitarian and health emergencies. He is the Director of the Johns  Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health and Distinguished Professor of the  Practice in the Department of International Health at the Johns Hopkins  Bloomberg School of Public Health.  

Before Hopkins, Dr. Spiegel was Deputy Director of Program Management &  Support and Chief of Public Health at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He previously worked as a Medical Epidemiologist in the International Emergency and Refugee Health  Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and as a Medical Coordinator with  Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde in refugee emergencies. 

Dr. Spiegel has published over 230 publications on humanitarian health, migration and human  rights. He is currently Chair of the CHH-Lancet Commission on Health Conflict and Forced  Displacement, co-chair of Lancet Migration, and Co-Technical Director of EQUAL.  

Dr. Spiegel’s extensive experience in leading humanitarian responses in the United Nations and  with non-governmental organizations combined with his academic work has made him a global  leader in bridging operations and academia in humanita

Lisa Dale teaches at Columbia University’s Climate School, where she serves as co-Director for the Masters’ program in Climate & Society. Trained as a political scientist, her research explores the way policies at all levels of government can enhance the capacity of rural communities to adapt to climate change. She studies this dynamic in the American West through research on wildfire policy, and in Sub-Saharan Africa through research on resettlement policy in Rwanda.

Lisa graduated with a Ph.D. in Environmental Policy from Colorado State University (2003). Her background includes several years as a policy analyst with the State of Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources. She currently lives and works in New York City, with a secondary academic appointment at the University of Rwanda. 

Dr. Sandra H. “Sandy” Magnus is employed by MITRE acting in the capacity of a “temporary government employee” as the Chief Engineer for the Traffic Coordination System for Space in the Office of Space Commerce in the Department of Commerce. She is also affiliated with the Georgia Institute of Technology as part time of Professor of the Practice. Dr. Magnus retired from federal service as the Deputy Director of Engineering in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for the Undersecretary of Research and Engineering. In that role she served as the “Chief Engineer” for the DoD establishing engineering policy, propagating best practices, and working to connect the engineering community across the department. Prior to joining the DoD she served as the Executive Director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the world’s largest technical society dedicated to the global aerospace profession. Selected to the NASA Astronaut Corps in April 1996, Dr. Magnus flew in space on the STS-112 shuttle mission in 2002, and on the final shuttle flight, STS-135, in 2011. In addition, she flew to the International Space Station on STS-126 in November 2008, served as flight engineer and science officer on Expedition 18, and returned home on STS-119 after four and a half months on board. Following her assignment on Station, she served at NASA Headquarters in the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. Her last duty at NASA, after STS-135, was as the deputy chief of the Astronaut Office. Before joining NASA, Dr. Magnus worked for McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Company from 1986 to 1991, as a stealth engineer. While at McDonnell Douglas, she worked on internal research and development and on the Navy’s A-12 Attack Aircraft program, studying the effectiveness of radar signature reduction techniques.

Maggie L. Fox is Founder of the Global Biodiversity Narrative Project, which seeks to  revitalize and realign the cultural narrative about humanity’s true relationship of  interdependence and connection with all life on Earth. She also serves organizations,  foundations, communities in the development and implementation of 21stcentury biodiversity, climate change, regenerative, organic agriculture and clean energy  strategies. She is a veteran of numerous local, state, national and international  environmental, political and policy campaigns.  

Maggie is past President and CEO of the Climate Reality Project and the Climate Action  Fund, working with Founder Al Gore to implement global climate leadership campaigns.  She was the national President of America Votes as well as the Deputy Executive  Director of the Sierra Club. Maggie currently serves on the boards of the Francis M. Green Fund, the Alliance for the Climate Emergency, Mad Agriculture, Colorado State  University’s School of Global Environmental Sustainability and The Outdoor Policy  Outfit (TOPO). Maggie began her career as a classroom teacher and community  organizer on the Navajo and Hopi Reservations of Arizona and New Mexico. An avid  outdoorswoman, Maggie worked with both the North Carolina and Colorado Outward  Bound Schools and has been on numerous mountaineering and other outdoor expeditions  around the world. She and her husband, Mark Udall, live in Eldorado Canyon, Colorado.  They have two children.

Hardin Lang is vice president for programs and policy at Refugees International. A veteran of six United Nations peacekeeping and humanitarian field missions, Hardin has worked in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Central America, Gaza and the West Bank, Iraq, Haiti, Jordan, Lebanon, Myanmar, Tunisia, Turkey, and West Africa. During his UN tenure, Hardin helped launch the UN stabilization mission in Mali, served as head of office for the UN special envoy for Haiti, and worked on the UN mission in Afghanistan. In Iraq, he served as chief of staff for the International Organization for Migration’s humanitarian and stabilization mission and later as an adviser to the UN special representative in Baghdad. Earlier in his career, Hardin spent two years working for the UN mission in Kosovo and three years working for the UN and human rights organizations in Guatemala.  

Immediately prior to joining Refugees International, Hardin was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP) where he specialized in Middle East conflicts and national security policy. He has also been a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Hardin has published widely, including in the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report. Hardin holds a master’s degree in public policy from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, a master’s degree in international history with a focus on the Middle East from the London School of Economics, and a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College.

Sam Myers is a Principal Research Scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health and is the founding Director of the Planetary Health Alliance (www.planetaryhealthalliance.org).

Sam’s research explores Planetary Health—a field focused on the human health impacts of global environmental change. His projects currently include exploring the human nutritional consequences of rising concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, falling populations of pollinating insects, and changes in global fisheries in response to ocean warming. He is interested in policy interventions to improve human health while stabilizing Earth’s natural systems. As the Director of the Planetary Health Alliance, Sam oversees a multi-institutional effort (over 350 organizations in over 65 countries) focused on understanding and quantifying the human health impacts of global environmental change and translating that understanding into action globally. For his research, Dr. Myers was the inaugural recipient of the Arrell Global Food Innovation Award in 2018 and Prince Albert II of Monaco prize for research at the interface of health and environment in 2015. He is the co-editor with Howard Frumkin of Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves published in August 2020, and he has authored over 100 peer reviewed articles and book chapters.

Generously Co-Sponsored by Upper Gunnison Water River Conservancy District

Dr. Anthony Tingle is the Program Director of the Institute for Future Conflict at the United States Air Force Academy where he oversees research on regional conflict and military technology including artificial intelligence, cyber, and biotechnology.   

Dr. Tingle’s research focuses on three core issues: the future of war, the future of US defense priorities, and the future of international security.   

As a public policy scholar and a retired Army officer, Dr. Tingle is a specialist on warfare in the 21st century, including ballistic missile defense, space combat, autonomous weapons, and hypersonic projectiles. He is an expert on the Ukraine conflict and has consulted with the Ukrainian military and has visited the country since the start of the war. 

Dr. Tingle received his Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Mason University and a BS from the United States Military Academy, at West Point.  

Lesley Brooks, MD serves as the Chief Medical Officer for SummitStone Health Partners and as the Assistant Medical Director for the North Colorado Health Alliance in northern Colorado.  As the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Brooks leads SummitStone’s partnership in the design, development and implementation of Larimer County’s new Longview Behavioral Health Services facility, which is set to open in November 2023.  

Dr. Brooks, a board-certified family medicine and addiction medicine physician, practiced full scope family medicine in the federally qualified health center including prenatal care, chronic pain, mental health, and substance use disorder/addiction in northern Colorado for 12+ years.   Since her transition to SummitStone Health Partners in 2020, she specializes in substance use and mental health.  Dr. Brooks has also served on the Colorado Medical Board, the Substance Abuse Trends and Response Task Force, the Colorado Consortium’s Provider Education Work Group, the Behavioral Health Transformational Task Force, and the Northern Colorado Medical Society. 

She earned her undergraduate degree from Kenyon College in Ohio and her medical degree from the University of Colorado School of Medicine.  Her residency training was completed at North Colorado Family Medicine in Greeley, Colorado.  She completed her fellowship in Primary Care Psychiatry through the University of California at Irvine.  She and her husband live in Greeley with their 2 children and 3 dogs.

Steve Scully is the host of The Briefing with Steve Scully which air weekdays on SiriusXM’s P.O.T.U.S. channel 124. He is also the Senior Vice President at Washington, D.C.’s Bipartisan Policy Center.  

In his three-decade career at C-SPAN, he served as political editor, host, and senior executive producer of C-SPAN’s programming, including Washington Journal, the Road to the White House series, and its podcast The Weekly.  He has interviewed every president since Gerald Ford.  In addition to his work at C-SPAN, Scully initiated a distance learning class, bringing D.C. experts virtually to the University of Denver and other schools nationwide.

Scully spent nine years on the White House Correspondents’ Association Board of Directors, including as president from 2006-07. In 2019, he was named to the Pennsylvania Broadcasters Hall of Fame.

Scully earned his M.S. degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Illinois. Prior to that, he received his B.A. in communications and political science from American University.

Ed Goeas served as President/C.E.O. of The Tarrance Group, one of the most respected and successful Republican survey research and strategy teams in American politics for thirty-five years. Over those thirty-five years, The Tarrance Group elected hundreds of Members of Congress and U.S. Senators, dozens of Governors, and countless statewide officeholders. Additionally, Goeas served as Program Director for the 2008 Republican National Convention and as a key advisor for John McCain’s Presidential Campaign.

Widely recognized as one of the country's leading political strategists, Goeas has conducted extensive survey research on Health Care, Criminal Justice Reform, and Immigration. In recognition of the number of winning campaigns conducted by The Tarrance Group, Goeas and his partners were honored in "1994, 2010, and 2014 as Republican Pollster of the Year," by the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC).

Along with his campaign work, Goeas co-authors the nationally recognized "Georgetown University Battleground Poll” with Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, and in 2011 were awarded the "Distinguished Service to the Profession Award" by AAPC. Last November Goeas and Lake released “A Question of Respect – Bringing Us Together in a Deeply Divided Nation,” which recently made The Wall Street Journal Best Sellers List.

Naomi Oreskes is the Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. An internationally renowned scientist and historian, she is a leading voice on the reality on anthropogenic climate change and the history of efforts to undermine climate action.

Oreskes is the author or co- author of nine books, including, Why Trust Science? (2019) and Science on a Mission: How Military Funding Shaped What We Do and Don’t Know about the Ocean (2021), and over 150 scholarly and popular articles. Her opinion pieces have been appeared around the globe, including on The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times (London), and the Frankfurter Allgemeine.  In 2015, she wrote the Introduction to the Melville House edition of the Papal Encyclical on Climate Change and Inequality, Laudato Si.  Her best-selling 2010 book with Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt, has been translated into nine languages, sold over 100,000 copies, and made into a documentary film. In 2018, she became a Guggenheim Fellow, and in 2019 was awarded the British Academy Medal. Her new book with Erik Conway is The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loath Government and Love the Free Market (Bloomsbury Press 2023). 

Co-sponsored by Western Colorado University 

Sewell Chan joined The Texas Tribune as editor in chief in October 2021. Previously he was a deputy managing editor and then the editorial page editor at the Los Angeles Times, where he oversaw coverage that was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2021. Chan worked at the New York Times from 2004 to 2018, as a metro reporter, Washington correspondent, deputy Op-Ed editor and international news editor. He began his career as a local reporter at the Washington Post in 2000. A child of immigrants, Chan was the first in his family to graduate from college. He has a degree in social studies from Harvard and a master's in political science from Oxford, where he studied on a British Marshall scholarship. He serves on the boards of Columbia Journalism Review, Freedom House, Harvard Magazine and News Leaders Association. He is a member of PEN America, the Council on Foreign Relations and numerous journalism organizations. He was elected to the board of the Pulitzer Prizes in 2022.

Anne Castle is a senior fellow at the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment at the University of Colorado Law School, focusing on western water issues, including Colorado River policy and management. 

From 2009 to 2014, Castle was the Assistant Secretary for Water and Science at the U.S. Department of the Interior where she oversaw water and science policy for the Department and had responsibility for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Geological Survey.  While at Interior, Castle spearheaded the Department’s efforts to provide federal leadership and funding to support sustainable water supplies, including the development of sustainable hydropower.  Castle also provided hands-on leadership on Colorado River issues.

Castle is a recovering lawyer, having practiced water law for 28 years in Denver. She serves on far too many boards and committees including the Colorado Water Trust, Western Resource Advocates, Airborne Snow Observatories, Stanford University’s Water in the West program, and the Colorado River Water and Tribes Initiative.

Castle received a Bachelor of Science degree in applied mathematics from the University of Colorado, College of Engineering. Her J.D. was also from the University of Colorado, qualifying her as a “Double Buff.”

Co-Sponsored by Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory

General James L. Jones, USMC (Ret.)

General Jones served as National Security Advisor to the President during the Obama administration from 2009 to 2010. During his tenure, General Jones oversaw an expansion of responsibilities of the National Security Council to include cyber security, homeland security, and other emerging issues. .

General Jones came to the White House from the private sector, where he served as the President and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy.

While leading the Chamber’s energy work, General Jones also served in the George W. Bush administration as the State Department’s Special Envoy for Middle East Regional Security. In this capacity, he worked with Israeli and Palestinian officials in furthering the peace process.

From July 1999 to January 2003, General Jones served as the 32nd Commandant of the United States Marine Corps, the most senior position in the Corps.

In 2003, General Jones was nominated to serve as Commander, United States European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe. As Commander of U.S. European Command, General Jones’ area of responsibility included 92 countries from Europe, Eurasia, and

Africa.  General Jones retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in February 2007 after a distinguished forty-year career.

Upon leaving the White House in 2010, General Jones founded Jones Group International. General Jones and his team assist clients in matters of energy security, national and international security, market access and strategic leadership.

Dr. Nicki Gonzales is the official Colorado State Historian, the first Latino person to hold that distinction. She is a professor of History, Politics, and Political Economy and Vice Provost for Diversity and Inclusion at Regis University. Dr. Gonzales is a member of History Colorado’s State Historian’s Council and in July 2020 was named by Gov. Jared Polis to the Colorado Geographic Naming Advisory Board. She is a native of Denver and her family has deep roots in Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico. Dr. Gonzales specializes in the history of the American West, with a focus on race relations and social and political movements in the Southwest, including the land grant movements of Southern Colorado. She will speak on the historical context and diversity of Colorado’s Latino population.

Nicki received her BA from Yale University and her PhD from CU Boulder, and is the mom of two boys, Danny and Teddy.

Co-sponsored by the CB Mountain Heritage Museum

Amber McReynolds is one of the country’s leading experts on election administration and policy. In 2021, Amber was appointed by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate to serve as a Governor for the United States Postal Service. Amber is focused on improving the voting experience for all, co-author of the book ‘When Women Vote’, the former Director of Elections for the City and County of Denver, Colorado and the former CEO for the National Vote At Home Institute and Coalition. Amber also served on the Colorado Independent Legislative Redistricting Commission in 2021.

Amber was recognized as a 2018 Top Public Official of the Year by Governing Magazine for her transformational work to improve the voting experience in Denver and across Colorado. Amber serves on the National Task Force on Election Crises, National Council on Election Integrity, Advisory Board for the MIT Election Data and Science Lab.

Amber is also currently serving as a senior strategic advisor on various election-focused projects across the country, serves as an expert witness in election litigation, and collaborates with various national and state professional organizations to identify and implement best practices in election administration.

Amber holds a Masters of Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

Peter Baker and Susan Glasser are longtime Washington journalists who write about the intersection of politics and the world. They are authors most recently of The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III, a New York Times bestseller that was named a book of the year by numerous reviewers and publications.   

Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times and an MSNBC political analyst. He has covered the last five presidents for The Times and The Washington Post and is the author or co-author of six books, including Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, selected as one of the Top Ten Books of 2013 by The New York Times Book Review, and The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton, a New York Times bestseller. He attended Oberlin College in Ohio.

Glasser is a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of its weekly “Letter from Biden’s Washington,” as well as a global affairs analyst for CNN. She previously was the editor of POLITICO and founder of the award-winning POLITICO Magazine. Before that, she was editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine following a long stint at The Post, where she was Assistant Managing Editor for National News.  Publications she has edited have won multiple National Magazine Awards. She graduated from Harvard University.

Together Baker and Glasser were Moscow Bureau Chiefs for The Post and authors of Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the End of Revolution. They live in Washington and plan to publish a book on the Trump presidency in 2022.

The talk will be moderated by Bill Scanlan, interviewer extraordinaire. Bill has been a regular host of C-SPAN’s signature morning program - Washington Journal, for 15 years. He has interviewed hundreds of guests from the world of politics and government. He’s also been a regular host for American History TV and anchored numerous C-SPAN special programs. He was a contributing announcer for C-SPAN’s Peabody Award-winning American Presidents series.

Dr. Amy Zegart is the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford University, and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She specializes in U.S. intelligence, emerging technologies and national security, and political risk.

The author of five books, Zegart’s award-winning research includes the leading academic study of intelligence failures before 9/11 — Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11 (Princeton 2007). She co-edited with Herbert Lin Bytes, Bombs, and Spies: The Strategic Dimensions of Offensive Cyber Operations (Brookings 2019). She and Condoleezza Rice co-authored Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity (Twelve 2018). Zegart’s newest book is Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence (Princeton 2022). Her analysis has been featured in Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere.

Zegart served on the Clinton administration’s National Security Council staff and as a foreign policy adviser to the Bush 2000 presidential campaign. She has testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee and advised senior officials on intelligence, homeland security, and cybersecurity matters. Previously, she was Professor of Public Policy at UCLA and a McKinsey & Company consultant. She received an A.B. in East Asian studies magna cum laude from Harvard University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University.

Michael D. Swaine is one the most prominent American analysts in Chinese security studies and currently serves as the Director, East Asia Program, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Formerly a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for nearly 20 years and before that a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, Swaine is a specialist in Chinese defense and foreign policy, U.S. –China relations, and East Asian international relations.

He has authored and edited more than a dozen books and monographs and many journal articles and book chapters in these areas, directs security and crisis-related projects with Chinese partners, and advises the U.S. government on Asian security issues. Swaine is a regular contributor to the China Leadership Monitor, a journal published by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.  An article in a leading Chinese foreign affairs journal identified Swaine as one of the four major scholars in the third generation of American “China Watchers.”

He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in government from Harvard University.

Governor Bill Ritter was elected Colorado's 41st governor in 2006 and was the District Attorney of Denver from 1993-2005. During his four-year term as Governor, Ritter established Colorado as a national and international leader in clean energy by building a New Energy Economy. After leaving the Governor’s Office, Ritter founded the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University, which works with state and federal policy makers to create clean energy policy throughout the country. Governor Ritter has authored a book that was published in 2016 entitled, Powering Forward – What Everyone Should Know About America’s Energy Revolution.

Governor Ritter was formerly the chair of the Board of Directors of the Energy Foundation and currently serves on the board of The Climate Group American and the Board of Trustees of The Nature Conservancy. Ritter is a member of Blackhorn Venture Capital and serves as an advisor to Green Alpha and Millennium Bridge, among others. Ritter earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from Colorado State University (1978) and his law degree from the University of Colorado (1981). With his wife Jeannie, he operated a food distribution and nutrition center in Zambia. He then served as Denver’s district attorney from 1993 to January 2005.

Sponsored by Kara Buckley & Karl Zachar

Paul Andersen has been a professional writer for 45 years. His writing career has earned him credits as a television scriptwriter, book author, magazine contributor, and columnist and contributing editor for the Aspen Times, where he currently writes a weekly opinion column, “Fair Game,” for which he has won awards from the Colorado Press Association.

Andersen has authored 15 books and written dozens of television scripts, including, “China: The Panda Adventure” for IMAX Films. His latest book, The High Road to Aspen, won the Colorado Book Award’s Gold Medal in June 2015.

Andersen’s career began in 1977 as a reporter for the Gunnison Country Times. In 1980, he became a reporter/editor for the Crested Butte Chronicle where he reported on all aspects of Gunnison County, including the AMAX mining project and controversy.

In 2013, Andersen founded the non-profit Huts For Vets, which he designed to help U.S. military veterans plagued by trauma find peace and healing in the wilderness at the 10th Mountain Huts of Aspen.

Today, Andersen leads wilderness hikes and seminars at the Aspen Institute,  mediates local community planning projects, and hikes, skis and bikes the mountains and deserts of the American West.

Sponsored by Kate & Al Vogel

Co-sponsored by High Country Conservation Advocates

Phil Weiser was elected as the 39th attorney general of Colorado in 2018.  He serves as the state’s chief legal officer. Previously, he served as a professor of law and dean of the University of Colorado Law School, where he founded the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship.  Weiser served in senior leadership positions in the Obama administration, including as a deputy assistant attorney general in the USDOJ and as senior advisor for technology and innovation at the White House’s National Economic Council.  Earlier in his career, he co-chaired the Colorado Innovation Council and served in President Bill Clinton’s Department of Justice.  After graduating law school, he worked in Denver for Judge David Ebel on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and held two clerkships at the United States Supreme Court, for Justices Byron White and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Sponsored by Mary & Dick Allen

David McCraw serves as the top newsroom lawyer for The New York Times during the most turbulent era for journalism in generations.   He is the author of the book, Truth in Our Times: Inside the Fight for Press Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts (St. Martin’s 2019), a first-person account of the legal battles that helped shape The Times’s coverage of Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, national security, and the rise of political partisanship in America.  Mr. McCraw has been at The Times for 19 years and currently holds the position of deputy general counsel. 

In addition to advising the newsroom on libel and other legal issues, he is one of the nation’s most prolific litigators of Freedom of Information cases, having brought multiple suits against the federal government over the past decade seeking the release of secret information. He also oversees international security for Times journalists and has worked as the crisis response manager when reporters and photographers have been kidnapped or detained abroad.

He is a visiting lecturer at Harvard Law School and an adjunct professor at the NYU Law School.  He previously was deputy general counsel at the New York Daily News.

Sponsored by Bob Valentine & Steve Bolton