Barbara Cole

Barbara Cole is a community planner and project specific facilitator who is president of Community Matters Incorporated, a small consulting firm located in downtown Littleton.  With over thirty years of experience, Barbara has an extensive background in downtown development, economic revitalization, land use planning, community development, and working with large diverse groups to reach concurrence on land use matters.  She is often called upon to design and facilitate planning processes that require the involvement of different community interests, to insure community acceptance and easier implementation of projects that occur in the public arena.

In addition to county and municipal work, Barbara has experience developing innovative financing strategies for both the public and private sectors. She has written and rewritten regulatory mechanisms to assure quality development for a number of counties and municipalities, most recently Chaffee County, Fountain, Greenwood Village, Morrison, and Castle Rock, Colorado.

Barbara's work for local, regional and state governments as well as for profit and non-profit firms has gained her the respect of many municipalities. She develops innovative processes to ensure that projects are indeed owned and supported by citizens of the community and result in positive and successful change in the community.

Barb has worked on over 30 comprehensive plans in the Rocky Mountain West, updated or rewritten zoning and development/design standards for over 20 communities and has been asked to design and facilitate numerous transportation-related improvement projects. She has authored or co-authored a number of nationally distributed "how- to" workbooks for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, US Small Business Administration and the State of Colorado.

Professional History

1986 to Present: Community Matters, Inc.: Littleton, Colorado, President.

1986: Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute, Snowmass, Colorado, co-developer of the economic renewal process, casebooks and workbooks.

1984-1986: Colorado Department of Local Affairs, Economic Development Specialist, Main Street and Colorado Initiatives Director.

1983-1984: First Urban Renewal Authority Director and Town Planner in Estes Park Colorado responsible for the Tax Increment Financing and redevelopment of downtown Estes Park.

1978-1983: Consultant/recipient of various national grants including NEA grant to develop design guidelines for the State of Colorado, Rockefeller Family Fund to write a book on downtown/townscape development for Vision, Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1974-1978: Planner for the Pueblo Regional Planning Commission, New York State Office of Community Development and planning intern for County agency in New York State.

YEARS OF EXPERIENCE
30+ Years with CMI: 21 (Founding Principal)

EDUCATION
Master of City Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1980
Bachelor of Arts degree in Geography, Colgate University, Magna cum Laude, 1976

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
American Institute of Planners, (AIP), preceded AICP.
American Planning Association, 1975 - present.
Colorado APA Executive Board; Vice President of Communications, 1997-2000;
Treasurer 2000-2004
Adjunct Associate Professor, Urban and Regional Planning Program,
College of Architecture and Planning, University of Colorado at Denver, 1996-1997.

RECENT AWARDS
Outstanding Colorado Planning, presented by the Colorado Chapter of the American Planning Association, for the guidebook Managing Colorado's Future: Integrating Land Use, Transportation, and Air Quality Planning.

Robert Haywood

A Colorado resident for over 30 years, Robert (Bob) Haywood, has engaged in a variety of economic development activities throughout the globe with a particular emphasis on diagnosing local economic conditions and discovering innovative ways to overcome local deficiencies. After being awarded a MBA, with distinction, from Harvard Business School, Bob has been engaged in hands-on operations management of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations, research, policy development, teaching, and consulting in a variety of national and international settings.

Bob brings an extraordinary global perspective to local economic development programs here in the United States. Even the smallest communities are affected by the global economy and the communications revolution. It's not just in the price of energy, the clothes and electronics purchased, the ethnic foods available to you, or the ubiquitous use of the internet and cell phones. It's also about how businesses and homes are financed, the mobility of workers, and the kinds of work communities can do. Too often local development officials lack the time and resources necessary to understand, explain, and incorporate some of these global trends into their local development plans.

As Harvard faculty, he studied banking operations in the Middle East shortly after the first "oil shock." Afterwards, he was Managing Director of a Hong Kong based company doing business in over 40 countries. Clients included ITT, Sony, Rank-Xerox, BSR, SGS, Blaupunkt, and others. In the early 80s he taught business and economics at the University of Colorado in Boulder including Business, Government and Society. From 1985 until 2008, he was the Director of the Secretariat for the World Economic Processing Zones Association (WEPZA) an organization established in 1978 by the United Nations. During his tenure, WEPZA had members from more than 60 countries. Bob was also President of International Parks, a consulting firm specializing in economic development with clients such as the United Nations Development Program, the United States State Department, the African Development Bank, and numerous governments and private sector organizations throughout the world. He was also Associate Director of the Flagstaff Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to research and publishing on international trade. All three organizations focused on bringing public and private investment to poor countries and to poor regions of large countries. During this time Bob also rescued a Colorado charity that was on the verge of bankruptcy and in the process created more than 500 new jobs in Colorado; jobs that continue to exist more than 15 years later.

In 2008 he served as the Senior Economic Advisor to the British led Multinational Division (South East) and a member of the Provincial Reconstruction in Basra. Iraq. Under extremely difficult and violent conditions, Bob focused on "winning the peace" by creating economic renewal and in the small cities and rural communities of Southern Iraq. Since returning from Iraq he has focused on the development of more effective and humane policies for maritime piracy suppression.

Professional History

2011 to Present: Community Matters, Inc.: Littleton, Colorado, Vice President, Chief Visioning Officer, and Director of Governance Matters .

2009-2011:One Earth Future Foundation, Louisville, CO., Executive Director and Chief Vision Officer; Sr. Fellow (2011): Initiated Oceans Beyond Piracy Project, "Modern Maritime Piracy in an Historical Context"(Forthcomming Book-February, 2012)

2008: Senior Economic Advisor, Multinational Division(SE)in Baghdad and Basra Iraq.

1992-2008: International Parks, Inc, Flagstaff Arizona: President and Consultant on Economic Development Projects throughout the world.

1985-2008: World Economic Processing Zones Association, Evergreen, Colorado; Director of the Secretariat. Members from 60 countries.

1986-1992: Metropolitan Association for Retarded Citizens (Owners and Operators of the ARC Value Village Thrift Stores throughout Colorado).Executive Director and President; Prevented significant Denver based charity from going into bankruptcy while increasing employment to over 500 ( 400% increase).

1979-1982: Tedelex (Far East), Hong Kong, Managing Director of a consumer Electronics, home appliances, and watches trading company.

Prior: Harvard University, Reasearch Faculty (1977-1979): Perkin-Elmer Corporation-Bid and Proposal Engineer, High Technology Optics (1973-1975),Computer Operator (1969)

YEARS OF EXPERIENCE
30+ Years experiance in Economic Development

EDUCATION
Master of Business Administration with Distinction, Harvard Graduate School of Business, 1977
Bachelor of Science degree in Physics with Honors, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 1973

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
American Economics Association