Team

Jacob Bornstein is the Founder and Director of United Politics Initiative and the Founder and Principal of Wellstone Collaborative Strategies. He brings twenty years of experience in strategic facilitation in Colorado and across the country, specializing in reaching consensus in collaborative initiatives around contentious topics. Bornstein is best known for his work at the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. There he spearheaded the development of the scenario planning process that underpins Colorado’s Water Plan and facilitated the final set of consensus actions detailed in the Colorado Water Plan. This was accomplished through a stakeholder process that he managed. This stakeholder process included nearly 400 stakeholders in nine regional water roundtables and one statewide group called the Interbasin Compact Committee. Stakeholders ranged from conservative cattle ranchers to liberal environmentalists. Below are examples of Bornstein’s strategic facilitation projects:

• Interbasin Compact Committee facilitation and technical support for the Colorado Water Conservation Board.
• Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments strategic plan and retreat facilitation.
• Social-Emotional Learning Initiative strategic plan and stakeholder group facilitation for Denver Public Schools and the City of Denver.
• Sustainable Ocean Fisheries technical assistance and strategic support of a major foundation working in the U.S., Chile, Peru, Mexico, and Indonesia.
• Healthy Schools Collective Impact stakeholder group facilitation.
• Community Living Quality Improvement Committee group facilitation and strategic roadmap. This stakeholder group seeks to improve the quality of services for people with disabilities and the elderly.

Bornstein was formerly the Director of Consulting for the Spark Policy Institute, where he also managed senior level consultants. Prior to Bornstein’s work for Spark and the State of Colorado, he was the executive director for the Colorado Watershed Network and was the water and land conservation director for the Roaring Fork Conservancy. Previously, Jacob was a statistics and scientific methods consultant helping Ph.D. students design their dissertations. He was also a statistician and methods consultant for large companies like General Electric.

The issue of violence against youth is personal to Bornstein. He and his wife have two little girls, the oldest entering school. He hopes that gun violence against youth is greatly diminished by the time they reach high school. As a child, Bornstein spent five years in Brooklyn during the eighties’ crack-cocaine epidemic. In his elementary school he witnessed and was subject to serious violence. While not gun-related, these experiences of violence help shape Bornstein’s passion to solving this issue from its roots to recovery.

Mr. Bornstein has a M.S. in biology and a B.A. in philosophy and history of science, with a minor in physics. He is also a certified facilitator and Six Sigma Black Belt (a statistical process improvement approach.)

Dr. Annie Miller leads Collaborative Management Consulting and is an Assistant Professor in Political Science at Washburn University. She is an active board member at the Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking and an alumna of the Downtown Denver Partnership Leadership Program. Formerly, she was a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Denver in the International Disaster Psychology Department and served as Co-Director of the Colorado Resilience Collaborative. Her research and community-based efforts focus on supporting communities to reduce hate, discrimination, bias, and identity-based violence by enhancing protective factors locally and globally. Her scholarship focuses on the effectiveness of networks and collaborations seeking to combat human trafficking, non profit management, and capacity development at the community and network levels to end wicked problems. Dr. Miller formerly served as the Director of the Center for Civic Engagement at Miami University Hamilton. While leading the Center, she coauthored the Ohio Civic Health Index which identifies civic and community behaviors and policy changes that might effectively lead to enhanced civic participation. She was at Metropolitan State University of Denver in the Human Services Department prior to joining the Graduate School of Professional Psychology at DU. Annie holds a M.S. in Higher Education Administration, a M.A. in Political Science, and a doctorate in Public Affairs from the University of Colorado Denver. Annie loves to travel abroad, talk in nerdy ways about craft beer, ride bikes, and take her dog, Phyllis, to the mountains.

Molly Burns is a Public Health and Psychology student at the University of Colorado Denver. Her goal is to work for a health-focused nonprofit doing advocacy work. She has experience as an organizing intern at Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains doing community outreach and civic engagement, as well as working on several campaigns in Colorado. Molly recently returned from studying accessibility of healthcare for adolescent girls in rural India. Currently, she is interning for a State Representative focusing on issues of healthcare, climate change, and voting rights. Molly graduates in May and is looking forward to being an advocate for Coloradans in public health issues facing our state.