From my college study of psychology to leadership and management training in my professional life, I have been intrigued and motivated by relationships and the communities they create. While at the Vail Leadership Institute (VLI) I discovered a passion for cultivating community and strong community relationships. As executive director of the Eagle Valley Alliance for Sustainability, my first work after VLI, I worked to change the organization’s mission to reflect its focus on community, rather than strictly environment. My consulting work following that has targeted businesses and organizations that are also foundations of community, such as the Bookworm of Edwards and the Education Foundation of Eagle County. I helped Augustana Care bring senior care to the community as the campaign coordinator to raise money to build Castle Peak Senior Care and then later as the marketing director for that campus.My volunteer work for the Vail Valley Foundation, Education Foundation of Eagle County, Vail Valley Partnership, Eagle River Watershed Council, The Literacy Project, and others has given me insight into the various roles and relationships that create our community story. My service on the Minturn town council, Eco Transit board, Eagle County Housing Advisory Board, and Eco Trails Committee has yielded tremendous lessons in the mechanics of the policies that shape and define us.Through all of this personal, professional, political, and volunteer activity I have developed relationships in that have helped me to understand community as an emergent property greater than the sum of its parts. And by this experience I have learned and developed strategies for leveraging these relationships for beneficial results.Specialties: Politics and policy; relationship management; small business services; local economies; process development.