M E M B E R S

Gordon grew up in Queens and lived in Los Angeles before moving to Boulder 24 years ago. Having experienced real traffic in NY and LA, upon arriving in Boulder, he was surprised to hear people say the traffic was getting worse, which turned out to be nothing compared to sitting on the 405 freeway, aka “the San Diego parking lot”.

Starting his career with a heavy emphasis on finance, Gordon morphed over time into corporate mergers, and ultimately strategy. Realizing there is a lot of important nuance to negotiating, Gordon learned the best ones often stay calm, respect and understand their counterparts, are honest, reliable, and often straight shooters. Professionally, Gordon remains active on two company boards, Patra, an insurance technology company, and Suerte Tequila, located right here in Boulder.

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At his core, Sam is a passionate musician who in 2006 founded the streaming music service Grooveshark as a freshman in college. For the next ten years, Sam pioneered the streaming space by introducing several innovations that today are the standard in music streaming. At its height, Grooveshark grew to 35M users, 140 employees, and over $60M in cumulative revenue, reaching profitability despite battling major lawsuits and growing throughout the 2008 economic crash.

After nine years working on Grooveshark, the company settled the pending lawsuits against it by agreeing to close in early 2015, so Sam could focus on a new radio startup called Chromatic FM, and now the blockchain startup called Auguron Systems.

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Born in Colombia, Viv (she/her) was spirited away to be raised in a bucolic, Northeastern island haunted with marshlands, vineyards, and small town gossip. Her sweet parents (a detective & a shop gal) had sleepless nights when she chose Poetry as her major, which was an even worse choice than Anthropology, as both revolve around the Meaning & Mystery of Life and not a steady path to acquiring security, status and stuff.

But then the internet happened!

Much to their relief, Viv used her ink-slinging capacities to rock her career around seven countries and five US states, from sky-scraper views on Wall St. to laptop nomadism in Australasia. She’s written for 150+ brands and recently, when she realized that over a million people had read her words, she quaked in deep Emersonian fear.

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Ross O’Brien is a project manager for Embodied Philosophy-- an online education platform for contemplative practice, philosophy, and somatic therapies. He is an assistant editor for Tarka Journal and a freelance writer in the realm of yogic philosophy and practice, meditation, psychology, and astrology. He has been studying yoga and meditation since 2010 and teaching weekly classes since 2017.

A recent transplant to Boulder from California in September 2020, he has thoroughly enjoyed his exploration of Colorado's epic beauty via bike and hiking trails.

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Eric Brightfield occupies two worlds - one musical and one technological; worlds not so far apart as they seem.

Receiving a full scholarship for Jazz Guitar Performance at the University of Maryland, Eric began the serious pursuit of his more artistic side. He has fifteen-plus years of experience sharing the gift of music as a teacher and a performer of many musical genres and acts in the greater Baltimore/DC metropolitan area.

Throughout the first ten of those years, Eric felt an ever-growing sense of unfulfilled curiosity and potential. This led him to self-study on a number of topics, but most notably computer science. Tinkering led to employment, and Eric soon found himself working in cybersecurity for a Fortune 100 company while maintaining his musical career on the side.

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Philosopher; Poet; Musician; Scholar; Father; Husband; Lawyer; Software Entrepreneur; Lover of Cats; Skier Extraordinaire. Look me up at Highland and let’s get beyond the type-set.

How does one write a bio before one dies? How does one really know what they stand for without looking back? Aren’t our survivors the ones who can most accurately give an account of who we are – of who we were? With a Margarita in my hand at 2 AM, I set out to write this “bio” as if I really know who I am . But it’s all clouded by who I think I am, who I think I should be, and who I’ve been before today. So, I look back. I take stock. I attempt to be fair and somewhat unbiased. Who am I writing this “bio” for anyways? I’m certainly not writing it for Sina. He already knows me better than I’ll ever know myself. So, I guess I’m either writing it for you, or I’m writing it for myself. Because all we all ever really want most is to know ourselves (or hope to God we never do)

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Crunch... Crunch... Crunch... CLINK.

Dave was digging a hole in the backyard for a new swimming pool (by hand) when he discovered a giant block of ice.

Huh? He swept away the dirt, shocked to find something frozen inside the ice... Not just something... Someone!

A caveman had been cryogenically frozen thousands of years ago, waiting to be discovered by an unassuming high-schooler. Dave brought the ice block into the shed to thaw. Lo and behold the caveman awakens and breaks free from the ice!

Confused, scared, and amazed, he looks around at the modern world - wondering where his tribe was, where all the trees went, and why all these strange people don't know how to build fires or hunt mammoths.

Of course, this story is from the 1992 movie Encino Man (Brendan Fraser's 2nd film ever) but it might as well be my life story.

Today, I find myself in a very strange world, working diligently to help reconnect humanity to the Old Ways (AKA how to live on the Earth).

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Marcia (pronounced Mar-see-ah) grew up in a small town in South Texas where she learned to love the outdoors, adventure, and horses. This upbringing instilled in her the value of independence and self reliance.

After graduating from law school, Marcia began her career as inhouse counsel for an energy company. This work took her to Philadelphia, Aberdeen, Scotland, and London, all of which she loved and appreciated for their unique qualities. Along the way, Marcia married and had a daughter and a son, and the family settled in Austin where she began work with a global renewable energy company.

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Alex Larson grew up on the beaches of the East Coast where he loved trying new ideas and activities. Hence, choosing one pursuit has often been challenging, but when his highschool mentor inspired him to become a pilot, he chose to settle on aerospace engineering.

In the beginning, Alex thought knowing how planes operate would simply give him a leg up in becoming a pilot. However, five years later with completed coursework, the likes of which he never thought he could do, he is proud to call himself an aerospace engineer.

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Thomas M. Clay is Managing Member of Epacria Capital Partners, a single-family office based in Boulder. Thomas and his late father were active investors in early stage technology, medical, and natural resource companies, and he now manages a portfolio of those companies. He currently serves on the boards of several small businesses including Oxurion, Golden Queen Mining Company, Arradiance, Covesion, and PRIME AE Group. He also serves as Chairman of the Clay Mathematics Institute and as an advisory board member of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Thomas is a graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University, and Harvard Business School.

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Heidi Piper is the Founder and CEO of PhoenixRising, a coaching and consultancy firm for executive leaders and their teams. Prior to this endeavor, Heidi spent three decades as an executive at Procter & Gamble leading teams to create and deliver global innovation for brands like Pampers and Tide.

For the majority of her adult life, Heidi lived in Belgium and Germany, and traveled extensively around the world. When Boulder irresistibly chose Heidi two years ago, she packed up her life after 30 years in Europe. Upon arriving, she joined City Club and wrote her first book here, a teaching memoir, called Choose Love.

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Katia has been designing and inventing all her life. While most kids were dreaming of becoming sports stars, doctors, or firefighters, she was dreaming of authoring patents. At Colorado State University, mechanical engineering was the closest thing to a degree in invention, and she simultaneously interned with HP Inc. in their Materials Science Lab, finally checking patents off her list. In addition, she participated in a collaborative research effort to standardize microgrids to achieve world electrification by 2030.

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Dominique grew up in France, close to the Swiss border and the Alps, and studied architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. In 1982, Dominique moved to Colorado, drawn by the region’s passive solar architectural advancements, the mountains and his then new American wife Vivian, who he met as an exchange student at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Dominique has been practicing architecture since the age of 25, has lived in Boulder since 1989, and is a long time trusted creative advisor to Sina on the various redesigns of Highland, especially the third floor City Club co-working space.

Dominique’s focus on all his architectural projects is: “Natural Light & Thermal Delight”.

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Born in Dallas and raised in Colorado, Chad Lewis graduated from CU Boulder in May of 2020 with a degree in Computer Science. Chad currently works as a Development and Software Engineer hoping to lead his own company someday soon.

Growing up, Chad was an avid hockey and lacrosse player, programmer, and a student of leadership. Once in college, Chad continued to play hockey, spent a brief stint as a cheerleader, became a brother in Tau Kappa Epsilon, and worked in one of CU’s research labs on AR and VR. He also tried and “failed" to start a cybersecurity company as well as a company striving to revolutionize search and rescue planning. Chad spends his free time reading, working on side projects, and growing his streaming channels.

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Niko is the co-founder and president of Redox, a healthcare data platform used by nearly 1,000 health systems across the country and more than ten million patients per day. The company has raised $50M in venture capital and has 160 employees. In 2017, Niko was named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list on the week of his 30th birthday.

Niko moved to Boulder two years ago and joined Highland City Club right away. Prior to this, he lived in Madison where he co-founded the largest co-working space in Wisconsin and played a large role in growing Madison's entrepreneurial ecosystem, working with UW Business School, VC funds and various accelerators. During that time, he co-founded twelve companies in a fit of rampant entrepreneurship. He originally moved to Madison to work at Epic, one of the largest healthcare technology companies.

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Born in 1939 when skies were clear, water was clean, and soil was teeming with life, Charlotte Sorenson is passionate about reversing environmental degradation and helping to save our planet.

Originally from Cambridge and Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Charlotte attended Wellesley College and received a master’s degree in education from Lesley College. She lived and taught in Switzerland, the Philippines and Cambridge, and used her background in art history to teach at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

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Originally from Connecticut, Donna relocated to the West Coast in her mid 20's. Little did she know, relocating would become a pattern for her. It was there, in Southern California that she met and married her husband while also finding a new career that she loved - the world of magazine publishing. With Donna at Vanity Fair Magazine and her husband charging hard in high tech, their first little bundle of joy arrived, and they decided to do something Donna never thought she would do - she would stay at home and raise their family while her husband continued to climb the corporate ladder. They relocated again...first, to the Washington, DC area, where they had their second child, and then, almost a decade later, a slower pace was needed, and they landed in the Boulder area in August of 2011.

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Chris, a native of Northern Michigan, developed a passion for the outdoors at a young age which led him to matriculate at the University of Colorado in 1997. In search of a career that would provide success and fun, Chris attended law school at the University of Richmond, taking time to travel in Europe and attend a NOLS course in Kenya.

While practicing law did not prove to be the career Chris was looking for, he did ultimately find fulfillment in a career acquiring and owning apartment communities all over the United States. Chris is active in this career today, and feels fortunate to do so along with two incredible business partners.

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Originally from western Massachusetts, Ben found his way to Boulder via Northern California.

A Boulder dweller since 2010, he absolutely loves this mountain town. Father to three lovely girls, husband to one lovely Connie, sometimes meditation dj and creativity coach and speaker, he also enjoys time in the kitchen and on bikes (of the pedaling variety).

Ben is a creative leader, having spent most of his adult life in design of one form or another. He splits his time between big thinking (strategery) and hands on making (photography, art and design). These days, he loves being a part of the Rasa Fam where he's the Director of Brand.

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