Sarah McDonald, President

Sarah works as Land Protection Specialist for Colorado Open Lands, a statewide conservation organization committed to preserving Colorado’s natural heritage. Sarah has a passion for restoring and enhancing the connection between people and place that stems from her background growing up as the sixth generation on a family cattle ranch. Sarah was fortunate enough to see the transformative power of community action through the founding and continued success of the Malpai Borderlands Group, a collaborative conservation group that her parents helped to establish. Sarah has worked with Arizona communities on land use visioning and with Maasai pastoralists on sustainable eco-tourism ventures. Sarah believes that safe, healthy, educated, inspired youth are the core of a vibrant community. She co-founded the Magna Mentoring Project in Tucson, Arizona, a group created to help first-in-family students get to college, and she is currently a mentor with The Bridge Project in Denver. When she is not on a Colorado trail, Sarah is either enjoying Denver’s wonderful public library system, or trying not to be a road hazard on her new bicycle.

smcdonald(at)revisioninternational(dot)org

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Alyssa Alt, Vice President

Alyssa is the Program Manager for eGo CarShare, the local nonprofit carsharing organization serving the Denver-Boulder region, where she helps market and grow this emerging service while focusing on getting people out of cars and into their communities. Growing up in small-town Wisconsin Alyssa moved to Colorado in 2005 after a year building houses with Habitat for Humanity in Florida. Since moving to Colorado, she has worked a variety of jobs including trail building with the Colorado 14ers Initiative and has completed her Masters in Urban and Regional Planning at CU Denver. While in school she worked with the Colorado Center for Community Development providing planning assistance to several rural Western Slope towns and creating lasting relationships with community members. Alyssa was recently appointed to the Mayor's Bicycle Advisory Committee and has her best ideas each morning during her commute to work on her trusty Schwinn bicycle.

aalt(at)revisioninternational(dot)org

Curtis Winar, Treasurer

Curtis Winar is a Certified Public Accountant and a manager in the Business Advisory Services Group of RubinBrown’s Denver office, a regional certified public accounting and business consulting firm. Originally from the Washington, D.C. area, Curtis came to Colorado over 16 years ago while traveling with friends on a ski trip during his winter break from the University of Georgia where he was completing his undergraduate degree in political science. He never left Colorado from that trip and decided instead to stay and make Colorado his home. He returned to his undergraduate and then graduate degree studies at the University of Colorado, focusing on finance and accounting.

Curtis has experience in a number of industries and non-profit organizations and thoroughly enjoys working with the numerous businesses and various other organizations and governmental agencies his position requires. He also has an active interest in his community and tries to provide support to areas that benefit the community wherever he can. He believes in striving to achieve sustainable options in addressing issues and improvements within our communities where possible. Curtis has served on a number of community boards and currently serves on the Budget Committee for the City of Centennial, Colorado. Outside of his finance and consulting work and his role in the community, he is sure to keep busy with his wife Cindy and daughter Sutton, traveling, mountain biking, hiking, snowshoeing, and, of course, skiing whenever possible.

cwinar(at)revisioninternational(dot)org

Susie Lewis, Secretary

Susie was born and raised in South Florida and developed her appreciation for the outdoors wading waist-high through Everglades swamps and kayaking the state’s extensive river system. This upbringing, coupled with extensive travel to many unique places around the world, convinced Susie of the necessity to change business as usual. She took a hands-on approach to behavior change as an undergraduate student and worked on such projects as helping launch a campus-wide sustainability organization and lobbying for a renewable energy student fee for the university. Susie has worked the past few years in the corporate sector in one of the areas closest to her heart - the intersection of sustainability and food/agriculture.

Throughout the years, she worked on such issues as local and organic food sourcing, energy and water conservation, employee education and behavior change, student engagement, marketing, and high-level strategic planning. A recent transplant to Colorado in 2010, Susie is now pursuing her MBA at the University of Colorado -LEEDS School of Business, focusing on Sustainability and Finance. In her spare time, Susie enjoys hiking, biking, live music, cooking and reading.

slewis(at)revisioninternational(dot)org

Jessica George

Jessica is the Grant Family Farms CSA Representative for the Denver/Boulder area. She worked as a technical writer for 10 years, but for the last 5 of those years had been looking for a more meaningful path. She found it in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Once Jessica purchased her first season of shares from the farm, all she wanted to do was get others to join as well. Realizing that everyone should have access to healthy food, she is working as a liason between Grant Farms and Revision International to bring their CSA shares to families in low-income communities.

jessica(at)revisioninternational(dot)org

Sarah Laverty

Sarah has always had a love of the outdoors, and moved from Boston to Colorado eight years ago to be a naturalist at Aspen Center for Environmental Studies. She then spent three years developing and implementing environmental policy for the City of Aspen. It was during these years she discovered the strong connection between social and environmental issues and the built environment—how much energy we use, how we choose to commute and how much we interact with our neighbors can all be traced to how we develop our communities. Believing land management and development activities provide tremendous opportunity to merge environmental and business interests, Sarah returned to school to focus on business and real estate. Sarah now works at Bio-Logical Capital, a land investment, development and conservation company. Much of her efforts are dedicated to proving the social, economic, and environmental benefits of agro-ecological farming, and developing business models that integrate sustainable land-based businesses.

Sarah received her bachelor’s degree in economics and environmental studies from Bowdoin College, and her MBA with a concentration in real estate and finance from the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business.

slaverty(at)revisioninternational(dot)org

Nicholas Farber

Nicholas Farber (Nick) is an Enterprise Specialist at the Colorado Department of Transportation’s High Performance Transportation Enterprise or HPTE. The HPTE was created as a government-owned business by the FASTER legislation of 2009. It is charged with the responsibility to aggressively pursue innovative ways at financing important transportation infrastructure projects that will improve the safety, capacity, and accessibility of the surface transportation system and will accelerate the economic recovery of the state. At the HPTE Nick manages and supervises the HPTE’s tolling system and Public Private Partnership relationships; develops and implements a public and private grant application program for the HPTE; and, participates in the development and implementation of financing plans for HPTE projects and Public Private Partnerships involving the HPTE. Nick also assists CDOT’s Division of Transit and Rail with the Interregional Connectivity Study and the I-70 Advanced Guideway System Feasibility Study.

Prior to joining the HPTE, Nick was a Transportation Policy Specialist at the National Conference of State Legislatures where he worked on innovative transportation finance policy. He received his J.D. from the University Of Denver Sturm College Of Law in 2007, and is licensed to practice law in Colorado.

nfarber(at)revisioninternational(dot)org

Mark Lewis

Mark engages in business development, government relations, and strategic consulting work at Energy North America. He has previously worked with an independent power producer, a smart grid technology firm, an environmental non-profit, and a renewable energy company. Mark received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of San Diego and also holds an MBA from the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado.

Born and raised in Denver, Mark is passionate about Revision’s mission to help bring the economic and health benefits of local and organic food to the most underserved in our community.

mlewis(at)revisioninternational(dot)org

Andy Vermouth

Andrew is Director of Marketing and Communications for iDE, a global rural development organization based in Denver. He has 20 years of experience as a creative director and designer, with specific expertise in multimedia production, and a driving interest in intercultural relations and sustainability issues at home and around the world.

Before joining iDE, Andrew worked in commercial architecture/planning, then branched into interactive design working on business development and brand initiatives for agencies in Boston and New York. He has designed environmental graphics for architecture and urban planning projects, produced documentary films, and worked in construction and development for a vegetative roof/sustainable landscape design company in Boston. He has traveled extensively throughout the developing world, and authored numerous articles, essays, videos, and visual art installations mostly focused on intercultural exchange.

Andrew is an avid backyard vegetable gardener and beekeeper, and was one of four residents to challenge Denver’s prohibition on beekeeping in late 2008, resulting in City Council’s vote to strike down the ban.

avermouth(at)revisioninternational(dot)org