We have invited key leaders from our community to share local solutions to systemic problems in health, education and environment. The discussion will be led by Boulder County Commissioner, Marta Loachamin. Details and registration link can be found here.
Marta Loachamin was elected to the Board of County Commissioners in 2020, with a term continuing through January 2025, representing District 2.
Marta is a long-time Longmont resident who has worked for social, economic, and housing justice by building opportunities for families throughout Boulder County and the Front Range.
Prior to serving on the Board of County Commissioners, Marta facilitated a project with Community Foundation Boulder County that highlights the opportunity for Cultural Brokers to influence decision making in our county. Additionally, her work with the City of Longmont after the 2013 flood established the Resiliency For All Project for the State of Colorado Division of Local Affairs.
She has taught youth in South America and in our own Saint Vrain Valley School District and is a licensed REALTOR® who has successfully helped hundreds of first-time homebuyer families access homeownership along the Front Range during her 20-year career as a housing advocate.
Karen Bailey is an Assistant Professor in Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist interested in human-environment interactions, climate change, and joyful relationships with the environment. She combines social science research with environmental and ecological data to understand feedbacks between communities and their environments, how we can build resilience to climate change, and how to support landscapes that meet human needs and sustainability goals.
She also has an emphasis on justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in environmental fields and STEM and is committed to research that supports, amplifies and engages the most vulnerable among us. Her current projects focus on climate adaptation in southern Africa, human health and well-being in east Africa, barriers to entry in natural resource fields, and just and equitable climate change research.
Samantha (Sam) Messier is currently the Area Superintendent for the Northwest Network in the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD). She entered pK-12 education through a non-traditional route, having completed a Ph.D. in Environmental Population and Organismic Biology at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1996. Her dissertation research focused on the evolutionary and behavioral ecology of termites, and she is fairly certain that no more than ten people have actually read any part of her dissertation, including family and dissertation committee members.
She worked for several years at the Biological Sciences Initiative at CU-Boulder, supporting pK-12 educational outreach in biomedical science. During this time, she received a grant from the National Institutes for Health for over $1 million to partner intensively with three middle schools in the Denver Public School (DPS) District in the area of Health Education. She then decided to become officially embedded in the pK-12 world and joined DPS as their science coordinator. After one year, she moved to BVSD where she began as the K-8 science coordinator, a role which included running the district’s science materials center. She lives in Boulder with her spouse, her nibling (gender-neutral term for niece/nephew), and two slightly overweight companion animals.
Elizabeth Crowe is the Human Services Investments Manager for the City of Boulder. Drawing on decades of non-profit organizing and community grantmaking experiences, she now manages three of the city Housing and Human Services Department funding programs: the Health Equity Fund, Human Services Fund, and Substance Education and Awareness (SEA) Fund. She also is one of the city’s Racial Equity trainers.
Prior to working at the City, Elizabeth worked as a non-profit environmental health and justice organizer at the local, state, national and international levels. While serving as Director of the Kentucky Environmental Foundation and Co-Director of Coming Clean, she advocated for and helped win safe clean-up of chemical weapons and other military toxics; transition from coal-burning to clean energy; toxic-free foods and products; chemical safety at refineries and chemical manufacturing facilities; and other clean air and water quality issues.
Currently, Elizabeth is a volunteer Co-President of the League of Women Voters of Boulder County; an active Giving Project member alum with the Chinook Fund; and occasional volunteer with Motus Theater and other social justice organizations.