Public Service

Ambassador Daniel B. Smith

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 14:15:00 +0000

Ambassador Daniel B. Smith Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 12/01/2015 - 07:15

Lisa Marshall

The Ambassador

Daniel B. Smith (Hist’77)

When Daniel B. Smith (Hist’77) became U.S. Ambassador to Greece in 2010 he embraced an honor that was also the greatest challenge of his career.

Deep in debt and reeling from the global financial collapse of 2008, Greece had just accepted a demoralizing $146-billion bailout from European neighbors and the International Monetary Fund. In return, Greek leaders had promised tax hikes and pension cuts that were taking a painful toll on ordinary citizens.

Smith immersed himself in Greek society, listening to anyone who would talk — olive farmers, shopkeepers and titans of industry alike — and sought to stoke the economy through tourism initiatives and entrepreneurship programs, especially for women and farmers.

“Dan is as approachable as they come,” says Virginia Bennett, Smith’s deputy chief of mission in Athens. “He was always engaged with the people, and that engagement translated directly into the kinds of relationships we needed to help keep Greece steady at a difficult time.”

The son of late CU-Boulder history professor Daniel M. Smith, Dan Smith attended Fairview High School, then came to CU.

As a doctoral student at Stanford in the early 1980s, he specialized in U.S. foreign economic policy and took the notoriously difficult Foreign Service exam on a lark. He did well, was offered a commission and went to Sweden as a consular officer.

“Since there were few opportunities in academia at the time, I decided to try the Foreign Service and found that I really loved the career,” he says.

More than three decades later, Smith has held posts in Stockholm, Ottawa, Bern and Istanbul, as well as in Greece, learned three languages fluently — German, Swedish and Turkish — and served as a prominent instrument of American policy abroad.

During the first Gulf War, he lived in Istanbul and traveled to Iraq to deliver aid to Kurdish refugees. In Canada in the 1990s he worked on negotiations that helped lay the foundation for the North American Free Trade Agreement. In Switzerland he helped negotiate the return of Holocaust-era assets in Swiss banks to their rightful owners.

“You get a bird’s-eye view of what is going on all over the world and an opportunity to serve your country in a really unique way,” says Smith, who has three sons with wife Diane. “I have loved every minute of it.”

Now back in Washington as assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, he believes reforms implemented during his ambassadorship have proved helpful. But with Greek unemployment above 25 percent and unresolved systemic financial challenges, he worries.

“They are proud, entrepreneurial people,” Smith says. “But the environment there has not been hospitable to entrepreneurship.”

While additional rounds of international debt relief have been necessary, he says, there’s still a “fundamental need” for regulatory and tax reforms to make the country economically competitive.

“Much will depend on whether and how successfully reforms are implemented,” he says.

Photography courtesy Daniel B. Smith

When Daniel B. Smith (Hist’77) became U.S. Ambassador to Greece in 2010 he embraced an honor that was also the greatest challenge of his career.

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Mayor Esther Manheimer

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 14:30:00 +0000

Mayor Esther Manheimer Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/01/2015 - 08:30

Bill Weir

Mayor, Asheville, N.C.

There are people with a fascination for the machinations of local government, and people who like beer. Esther Manheimer (Anth’93) is at home in both camps, and among the lucky few to combine the two for her work: She’s mayor of Asheville, N.C., a place that “takes its pleasures seriously,” as the New York Times put it.

“Like many folks who run for local office, I have a love for my community and a desire to serve,” says Manheimer, whose family settled in Asheville when she was a teenager. “This is one of the ways I thought I could best serve.”

A city of about 87,000 in the state’s far west, Asheville is thriving — not least because of its dedication to the fun things in life, which attracts 9.8 million visitors each year. This includes everyone from foodies to garden hobbyists to fans of early electronic music. (Asheville was home to late synthesizer pioneer Bob Moog.)

The city has become a hub for microbreweries, which provide many of the higher-skilled, better-paying jobs. Manheimer recently performed the ceremonial “first pour” at the newly expanded Hi-Wire Brewing facility — one of 18 breweries in town.

The Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College has even established a new beer-making degree program, “Brewing, Distillation and Fermentation.”

“People used to say, ‘Oh, that’s a hobby,’” Manheimer says, “but now it’s an industry.”

Manheimer found politics early — protesting apartheid as a teenager and learning firsthand the complex sensitivities of the Middle East during two lengthy stays in Israel, the first before she came to CU-Boulder.

It was at CU that she grew serious about local politics, partly through a political science course that took her to state legislature and county commission meetings.

“That may be a bit of an eye roll for some people, but I think it’s fascinating how local people made decisions about greenways, zoning and trash pickup — for me, that’s what affects people’s everyday life.”

Manheimer, now 44, says her CU days “shaped my life today more than any other place or experience in my life. That was when I got my political feeling and learned how to participate in politics.”

After CU, she returned to Asheville and earned public administration and law degrees at the University of North Carolina. She was elected to Asheville’s city council in 2009, and four years later, mayor.

Living in a vacation destination isn’t always a vacation for the locals, an issue she works hard to manage.

“The balance between the locals and tourism is a constant issue,” says Manheimer. “You have locals who say they’ve been downtown and they didn’t even recognize it because it was so packed.”

But on the whole, tourism has been good for Asheville, and it’s hardly the only game in town.

“One of the things that has made Asheville successful is that we’re not a boom-or-bust town,” she said. “We haven’t put all our eggs in one basket.

Photography by Max Cooper

There are people with a fascination for the machinations of local government, and people who like beer.

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Stan Garnett, Western Lawman

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 14:15:00 +0000

Stan Garnett, Western Lawman Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/01/2015 - 08:15

Marty Coffin Evans

Western Lawman

District attorney is not a job for the faint of heart. Ask Stan Garnett (Hist’78, Law’82).

In March, Garnett, the Boulder County District Attorney, was faced with a ghastly attack on a pregnant woman in nearby Longmont. The mother survived; the fetus died. Garnett had to decide whether to charge the alleged perpetrator, a woman, with homicide.

He decided he couldn’t: There was no way to prove the child was ever alive outside the mother, as required under Colorado law for fetal homicide.

“Many people in the community, and heaven knows I’ve heard from a lot of them, would like me to have filed homicide charges,’’ Garnett said in public remarks quoted by the New York Times.

He filed a raft of other charges instead, including attempted murder.

“This case, while so tragic, provides us with an opportunity to explain to the public what our job is,” he tells the Coloradan. “The rule of the law is the same for everyone. We don’t make it up as we go along.”

Garnett, who grew up in Boulder and was elected DA in 2008, supervises a team of 75, including 30 lawyers. The DA’s office prosecuted about 2,000 felonies last year, some as grave as rape, assault and murder, others more commonplace.

“I like to take as many cases to trial as possible for the community to decide,” Garnett says.

His deputies handle most of the cases, but Garnett will try those that are of personal interest, have symbolic value or are unusually complex. As DA he’s tried two homicides, for example, as well as a Boulder police officer’s illegal shotgun killing of an elk in a residential neighborhood.

Garnett began his career as an intern in the Denver District Attorney’s office in the early 1980s and cites Brooke Wunnicke (Law’45), then chief deputy of appeals in the office, as a mentor. After graduation he joined the office as a deputy DA and tried about 100 cases from 1982-86.

“I’m one of the few people you’ll ever meet who say they loved every minute of law school,” says Garnett. “It brought together lots of strains in my life — an interest in language, the desire to help the world become a better place and a love of storytelling.”

In the mid-1980s he entered private practice and worked 22 years at the Denver firm of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, specializing in complex litigation. Handling a case for John Elway involving his Denver car dealerships — and winning it at the Colorado Supreme Court — holds a special place in his memory.

Garnett, who served two terms on the Boulder Valley School District board, ran unopposed for Boulder DA in 2008 and 2012. He ran unsuccessfully for Colorado Attorney General in 2010.

These days, Stan Garnett isn’t Colorado’s only elected Garnett: In November, his son, Alec (MPubAd’08), won a seat in the Colorado House of Representatives.

Photo courtesy Boulder County District Attorney’s Office

District attorney is not a job for the faint of heart. Ask Stan Garnett (Hist’78, Law’82).

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Elly Goetz

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Elly Goetz Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/01/2012 - 00:00

Beth Phillips

Elly Goetz (Soc’03) learned the importance of investing in herself and others while growing up. Her parents often took in children whose families needed help and taught her to invest her own resources to help others get what they needed.

These lessons solidified through her domestic and international service-learning experiences with CU-Boulder’s INVST. That preparation proved critical when, just five years after graduating, Elly became executive director of Un Mundo, a Honduras-based nonprofit organization.

“By far I could not accomplish what I have with Un Mundo without my experience with INVST,” says Elly, who taught English as a Second Language in Ecuador before pursuing a master’s degree in urban planning.

On the recommendation of a mutual contact, the founders of Un Mundo approached her. After recent turnover, Un Mundo needed a committed leader to launch its largest project — construction of the first public high school in the region. In early 2008 she moved to the Cangrejal Valley in Honduras as Un Mundo’s executive director.

Her first year brought many challenges. Elly had to meet her own basic needs constructing her office and home and acquiring running water and electricity before addressing the community’s needs.

By facilitating community-driven projects, Un Mundo helps marginalized populations in Honduras feel confident, in control and empowered to improve their community. Staff and volunteers live within the communities and listen to locals identify issues.

“Many of our projects evolve from sitting around the dinner table and people asking for help,” Elly says.

Current projects include a program for children with special needs and a midwife project connecting women to health care. Ultimately, locals will manage the projects.

In November 2010 the first class graduated from the high school Un Mundo helped construct. Elly is optimistic about the school’s ability to transform the community by teaching skills like reading and leadership that are vital to the region’s growth. Eventually, she hopes locals will run Un Mundo.

One graduate already works there helping run projects. Another is studying for her nursing entrance exam.

Elly still heeds her parents’ advice to invest her own resources to help others develop the resources they lack. Undoubtedly, these investments translate to generous returns for the Cangrejal Valley, Honduras, and the world.

Visit www.unmundo.org for more information or to make a donation.

Elly Goetz learned the importance of investing in herself and others while growing up. Her parents often took in children whose families needed help and taught her to invest her own resources to help others get what they needed.

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