McClintock named director
DENVER, Colorado — The Sonoran Institute is expanding its work in Colorado, including opening an office in Denver to focus on growth, energy, transportation planning and related policy and legislative issues. Veteran Colorado conservation and civic leader Rich McClintock is heading up the new office.
As the Institute’s Colorado policy director, McClintock will work to inform the state’s discussions of smart-growth, sustainable energy, oil and gas development, open space and other conservation issues. The Institute has similar state policy programs in Montana, Wyoming and Arizona. McClintock was formerly the founding program director for the Livable Communities Support Center, a program of Civic Results, and served as executive director of the Colorado Public Interest Research Group (CoPIRG) from 1988 to 2001.
The nonprofit Sonoran Institute, based in Tucson, Arizona, is known as a leader in collaborative, community-based conservation in the West. It also has offices in Phoenix; Bozeman and Helena, Montana; Grand Junction, Colorado; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and Mexicali, Mexico. Its new Denver office is in the Alliance Center, a building in Lower Downtown at 1536 Wynkoop Street, which houses a variety of nonprofit groups.
“We are excited about our commitment to the land and people of Colorado and to working on state and federal policies that affect communities in this state and across the West,” said Luther Propst, executive director of the Sonoran Institute. “Rich’s in-depth experience with Colorado conservation issues makes him an ideal leader for our work here.”
“I am delighted at the opportunity to join the Sonoran Institute team and to work with communities, nonprofits, businesses and governments to help keep Colorado livable and protect the natural and cultural assets of this state that we all cherish,” McClintock said. “It is wonderful to be able to wake up every day and work for an organization that will help make us good ancestors.”
McClintock graduated magna cum laude from Colorado College and has a masters in public administration from the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado at Denver. He is a graduate of the State and Local Leaders program at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a 2006 recipient of the “Distinguished Service to the Region” award from the Denver Regional Council of Governments.
The Sonoran Institute inspires and enables community decisions and public policies that respect the land and people of western North America. Since 1990, the Institute has been helping communities conserve and restore healthy landscapes and manage growth and change through collaboration, civil dialogue, sound information and big-picture thinking.