Background

My approach to being BCDP Chair is inspired by my decades of experience volunteering for Democratic campaigns. My first volunteer experience was for the Howard Dean Presidential campaign in 2003. I soon experienced the heartbreaking loss of the 2004 election, a heartbreak that so many of us are experiencing again today. But I resolved to keep fighting, and continued to volunteer with my local organization in California. I moved to Boulder in 2007 immediately after finishing graduate school, to take a job in my career area of computational physics.

I began volunteering for the Boulder County Democrats in 2008, just after I moved to Longmont. Even before the moving boxes were unpacked, I joined the coordinated Obama/Udall/Betsy Markey campaign, knocking on doors in my precinct. That year, I got to experience the joy of victory.

The next day, about a half dozen of us Longmont volunteers met with Representative Markey, in my living room, for over an hour. We shared our thoughts in issues that matter, the most prominent then being health care. By the end of the meeting, any cynicism I had about volunteering was gone. And Betsy Markey was one of the first swing-district Democrats to announce she was voting for Obamacare, starting a flood of support that led to its passage. My husband and I have health insurance thanks to Obamacare.

I have continued to be involved since, as a Precinct Organizer and volunteer, in Longmont and then in South Boulder when I moved there in 2012. I stepped up my involvement in 2022, taking an interest in BCDP governance issues and joining the Bylaws Team. I worked effectively as part of that team, and my colleagues soon recommended me for a Team Leader position. As a Bylaws Team Leader over the last two years, I've gotten to know in detail the work of teams across the party.  I’ve worked with some of the most dedicated volunteers in the party, and listened to concerns about how our rules could better serve their needs.

Outside of politics, I'm a physicist and an avid runner. I've worked toward diversity and inclusion in both of those areas as well: As Chair of a Physics conference, I led a successful effort to dramatically improve the representation of women. And I contributed to a bid to bring the 2022 Gay Games, and international LGBT sporting event, to the Denver area. I live just outside Boulder city limits with my husband and our four cats.