Who’s who on the governor’s COVID-19 response teams
Gov. Jared Polis has worked with corporate leaders to form advisory councils as the state addresses the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. Here are those people he has appointed as of March 26:
GOVERNOR’S ECONOMIC STABILIZATION AND GROWTH COUNCIL
Mission: Will serve as economic advisers to the governor to help him navigate COVID-19 affects on the state economy.
Federico Peña, chair.
Former two-term Denver mayor who served as secretary of energy and secretary of transportation during the Clinton administration in Washington. He also once served as minority leader in the Colorado House of Representatives. An attorney, he now is senior adviser to the venture capital firm Colorado Impact Fund.
Gary Arnold
Business manager of Denver Pipefitters Union Local 208; prominent voice for Denver-area organized labor.
Deborah Jordy
Executive director, Science and Cultural Facilities District; longtime advocate for the arts in Colorado. A former executive director of the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts, the Cherokee Ranch and Castle Foundation, and the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities; was associate curator of modern and contemporary art at the Denver Art Museum.
Dick Monfort
Owner, chairman and CEO of Major League Baseball’s Colorado Rockies; prominent Colorado businessman. Brother to business partner Charlie Monfort and son of Kenneth Monfort, who founded Greeley meatpacking company Monfort of Colorado. Dick Monfort was president of Monfort of Colorado Inc., now a subsidiary of ConAgra, and later served as president and CEO of ConAgra Red Meats. He helped launch the Montera Cattle Company in 1996. Currently chairman of the University of Northern Colorado Board of Trustees and chairman of the Board of Directors for UCHealth.
Blair Richardson
Chairman and CEO of Bow River Capital; has held executive positions in international sales and trading of public equity and debt securities for 25 years. Named one of the most influential people in Denver by 5280 magazine – “The 5280 Fifty” – in 2011.
Jim Crowe
Former CEO of Level 3 Communications; former board member of Denver Health.
Brad Feld
Venture capitalist, entrepreneur, co-founder and partner with Boulder-based venture firm Foundry Group and co-founder of Techstars. Began financing technology startups in the early 1990s as an angel and institutional investor. Early investor in Harmonix, Zynga, MakerBot and Fitbit.
Dave Young
Colorado state treasurer; former member of the Colorado House of Representatives representing District 50 from Greeley. Was a longtime math and technology teacher at a Greeley junior high school and also worked as an information architect with an international Web design firm and as a coder for a company that performed DoD programming for NORAD.
Cary Kennedy
Governor’s policy adviser who served as state treasurer 2007-2011. Worked as a budget analyst in then-Colorado Gov. Roy Romer’s Office of State Planning and Budgeting and as a fiscal analyst for the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing.
Lauren Larsen
Director, Governor’s Office of State Planning & Budgeting. Was director of state operations, Office of the Lieutenant Governor & Chief Operating Officer; also served as director of the state Division of Professions and Occupations in the Department of Regulatory Agencies. Was a senior adviser in the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington.
Joe Barela
Executive director of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment; former director of the Skillful program at the Markle Foundation; was a regional director for the Arapahoe/Douglas Works! program.
Rick Garcia
Executive director of the Colorado Department of Local Affairs. Served as the regional administrator for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Region VIII in Denver in the Obama administration.
Betsy Markey
Executive director of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade. Represented Colorado’s 4th Congressional District in the U.S. House, 2009-2011; co-founded a software firm, Syscom Services; former regional administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration; former assistant secretary of intergovernmental affairs for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
INNOVATION RESPONSE TEAM
Mission: To bring together public and private sector resources and innovations for the state’s emergency response to the COVID-19 virus. The team’s initial focus is a mass testing program for the COVID-19 virus, creating a suite of services for citizens under isolation or quarantine, developing mobile and other technologies to help track the spread of the virus and support infected citizens, and developing locally-sourced alternatives for constrained critical medical supplies.
Matt Blumberg, interim director
Technology entrepreneur who founded and led Broomfield-based email technology company Return Path for the past 20 years.
Brad Feld
Will chair Innovation Response Team’s Private Sector Task Force; it will be within the State’s Emergency Operations Center command structure under Colorado Department of Public Safety chief Stan Hilkey.
Lucy Sanders
Lucy Sanders, the CEO and a co-founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology, will head up Isolation Services. The objective is to provide people who are in self-isolation or home quarantine with critical supplies like food and access to health care, and also ancillary services to make their at-home experience as comfortable as possible.
Tim Miller
Tim Miller, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Rally Software, will head the Software Development Team. The objective is to build applications and web sites for both government and citizens to manage all aspects of the crisis, and provide the state with key data.


