Karen Gerwitz joined the Civic Canopy in 2006 to help plan the 3^rd Annual Raising the Civic Canopy. She currently serves as the Vice Chair of the Board, she chairs the Governance Committee and serves on the Program Committee. She brings 20 years communications experience from the public, private and non-profit sectors to the Board. Much of her career was in state government, where she currently serves as director of communications at DORA, the Department of Regulatory Agencies; and formerly as director of board relations with the Colorado State Board of Education; and the chief of protocol for the Colorado International Trade Office. She has worked overseas in Vienna, Austria and Ghana, West Africa. Karen received her Master’s of Public Administration with an emphasis in dialogue and deliberation processes. She volunteers for a number of community engagement organizations, including the North City Park Civic Association and the City Park Alliance. She is married to Elie Mardiros and has an oversized Boston Terrier named Winston.

In her role as Vice President of Community Relations and Development for the Humane Society of Boulder Valley, Constance Rule sets the strategic direction for community relations including fundraising, community outreach and youth education programs, fee-for-service marketing communications, and organizational public relations.  Constance joined the Humane Society of Boulder Valley in 2007 with more than 20 years of strategic planning, development and event management experience. Prior to the Humane Society, Constance was Executive Director of The Spirituals Project at the University of Denver where she directed University and K-12 educational programs in the community bringing music, culture and history together in meaningful and interactive sessions.  Her previous experience includes senior management with several marketing communications firms specializing in integrated marketing communications for government agencies, corporations, and nonprofit organizations in Denver, Washington, DC, and major markets around the country. Constance has an Executive MBA from Dartmouth College and business degrees from University of Northern Colorado and Regis University.

Rebecca Saltman has been working in public relations, fundraising and grass roots coalition building for 20 years. Rebecca first rallied her talents in Denver on behalf of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America, developing national campaigns (i.e. annual Hoop-a-thons) to fund Centers of Excellence nationwide. These campaigns continue to raise awareness and funds today. She then turned her talents toward law and public policy, lobbying on behalf of health care and telecommunications agencies. She has been involved with no less than 50 public forums with both federal and state agencies in an ongoing effort to increase the credibility of telecommunications carriers and health care organizations nationwide. Having worked in New York for seven years, Rebecca worked on one of the worlds largest collaborative efforts opening the Boston and New York offices for Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. Her collaborative efforts produced nearly 15,000 Holocaust survivor testimonies as part of the nearly 65,000 testimonies produced world wide. These works lead her to the opening of the New York Musueum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust on September 11, 1997. Since then Rebecca's work has spanned from healthcare to the arts, social justice to environmental sustainability.

Today, Rebecca is a social entrepreneur and the President and Founder of an independent collaboration building firm designed to bridge business, government and nonprofits and their needs as well as two other "disruptive innovations" that create systemic change.

Rebecca has been in Colorado for more than 8 years, clearly the best decision she ever made.

Rita Schweitz is a Certified Professional Facilitator™, a highly-regarded designation of the International Association of Facilitators. With over 20 years of local, national and international experience, Rita skillfully focuses on whole system planning and change, involving diverse stakeholders and emphasizing client ownership of both the process and the implementation of results. She has worked with international organizations, governmental agencies, communities, environmental organizations, non-profit organizations, education, corporations and indigenous peoples. She has helped foundation Boards of Directors with planning and decision-making as well as assisted in high conflict areas, such as environmental and development conflicts in Texas and Kenya. She ensures that meeting participants accomplish their goals by improving communications and augmenting the qualities of decision-making, planning, teamwork, and management of diverse groups of stakeholders. She is co-editor of a book on participation in school district change and contributor to the seminal book on large group meetings, The Handbook of Large Group Methods.

Rita, her husband, and their four adult children love the Colorado lifestyle and enjoy skiing, biking, hiking, and sunset watching.
 

Dramatist, historian and newspaper commentator, Jack R. Van Ens serves as Executive Director of Creative Growth Inc. (www.thelivinghistory.com), making history come alive as Van Ens portrays Thomas Jefferson and the colonial preacher Jonathan Edwards in period costume. Since 1976, Van Ens has portrayed these pivotal leaders for schools, religious organizations, libraries, and public service groups. The Colorado Humanities sponsors him on the Chautauqua circuit.

Having earned two Masters degrees (one in colonial history) and a Doctorate in Communications from Princeton Theological Seminary, Van Ens has twice been invited as a Visiting Scholar at the International Center for Jefferson studies at Monticello. His book, “How Jefferson Made the Best of Bad Messes,” was published in 2000. Since 1974, Van Ens has written a weekly commentary for newspapers in which he interprets what’s happening at the intersection of politics and religion.

For almost two decades he has coordinated the Jefferson County (CO) Good News Breakfast, bringing together 500+ community leaders to celebrate civic virtue. Van Ens joined the Colorado Civic Canopy at its start, a statewide network of networks fostering civic engagement.

He is married to Sandra, an educator who leads seminars for the Colorado Writing Project. Since 1981, they have resided in Arvada, CO, where their three grown children were raised and educated.