Meet the Candidates for the 2024
Executive Committee Elections

The Executive Committee is running staggard elections. Four EC members will stay on the committee for an additional year (through summer of 2025). Five spots on the Executive Committee will be elected in the 2024 EC election.

Candidates for 2024

Below are the candidates running for the 2024 Executive Committee election.

Jono Wilde

Jono was born and raised in Chicago and moved to Colorado in 2017. He's passionate about civic engagement and wants to work with an organization that is committed to building a broad-based movement to address systemic issues and create a more equitable society. He's experienced in strategic planning, coalition-building, fundraising - all centered around his exceptional communication skills - and sees the Forward Party as a means to achieve significant impact on a national scale. He thrives in a collaborative and inclusive environment and is eager to join the Forward Party and dedicating his time to making a positive difference in the world.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonodk/

Jamie Leben

Thank you for your consideration of my candidacy for the Colorado Forward Party Executive Committee! You can expect me to have the experience, skill set, accountability, and reliability to perform effectively as a Colorado Forward Executive Committee member and to work for the goals and success of the Colorado Forward Party.

I've lived in Colorado since 1979 and raised my four sons in northern Colorado. I founded and sold two business while being active in the startup community across Colorado, and founded and served as Board President of 501C3 www.lovelandcreatorspace.com

I currently work in IT at Xcel Energy and recently invested in and completed the 2024 Civico Colorado Governor's Fellowship program toward furthering my public service journey.

I've supported ranked choice voting and UBI since Andrew Yang's Presidential campaign, and am a registered Forward Party member.

Thank you for your consideration, and I ask for your support in election to the Colorado Forward Party Executive Committee!

James Robert "Rob" DuBois

Rob DuBois is the founder and lead Impact Coach of the “whole-person development” firm, Impact Actual. He is also a multilingual, retired U.S. Navy SEAL, intelligence professional, and career Red Team security leader. He has worked in more than 30 countries over more than 30 years.

In 1986, Rob underwent Russian language and culture training for service with the National Security Agency to fight against the existential threat of the Soviet Union. After ten years working out of NSA in Maryland, a multinational base in Northern Turkey, and Hawai’i, he transitioned to SEAL training. (He does not recommend anyone else try going through SEAL school as an “old man” of 30 years!)

From 1996 to 2006, Rob served as a special reconnaissance SEAL at SDV Team ONE in Hawai’i and as a Red Team operator based in Washington, DC. He has trained foreign forces in a dozen nations and has planned mock terrorist attacks (for the purpose of exposing vulnerabilities) against American interests worldwide.

On 9/11 Rob was teaching Arab commandos at a remote Arabian Gulf base. American and Arab SEALs together watched the Towers collapse, and both nations went to war against al Qaeda.

Such complex experiences led to his first book on cross-cultural conflict, “Powerful Peace: A Navy SEAL's Lessons on Peace from a Lifetime at War.”

Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis emailed Rob about Powerful Peace to say, “You’ve written a masterful work ... you did expand my perspective.” And world-renowned peak performance expert Tony Robbins called Powerful Peace, "A must-read for all, but especially those who wish to influence others."

Rob has spoken extensively on national and international television, radio, and in keynote talks across the United States on “unchaining” human potential and leading powerful teams. (You can also see him in the exciting National Geographic documentary “MYgrations,” a six-week trek — without food or weapons — across the Serengeti in Tanzania.)

He has five amazing adult kids (well, one’s 13 going on 30), and an amazing life partner in Amy.

Rob has been very concerned for a very long time about the degradation of American leadership and governance. And now that he’s finally “settled down” in Colorado Springs after nearly 40 years of service, would like to bring this unusual wealth of experience to supporting the new hope of Forward. For the past few months, he has been serving as the Communications Committee Chairman for the Colorado Forward Party. Rob believes that from a seat on the Executive Committee he would be well positioned to both help serve the party’s needs and more effectively guide the organization’s extensive and essential communications responsibilities.

Wes Sawyer

I'm a lifelong Republican alienated from the party by the extreme elements who now control the parties apparatus. I feel strongly that the reform agenda of the forward party is the key to healing our politics. I'm retired with two grown children and two grandchildren. I enjoy fly fishing, chess, and reading. I have lived in El Paso County for over 30 years.

Blake Biegalski

Starting in 2017 Blake worked as a Paraprofessional working with Diverse Learners. In 2021 he transitioned to logistics, both in team member and leadership roles. He is currently a member of the Teamsters Union. In 2020 Blake's attention was drawn to Andrew Yang's political philosophy. In June of 2024, Blake showed interest in the Forward Party and was contacted by Wendy Petri. Since then he has gotten involved as a Community Organizer in Pueblo and as a member of both the Canidate and Communications Committee's.

Colorado Forward Party is in its infancy, and all infants go through a period of dramatic, exponential growth during their first few years. That is Blake's first priority, finding methods to expand the reach and scope of COFWD in an aggressive manner to ensure the parties growth.

George Stephen Pittman

Steve Pittman retired from IBM at the end of 2019. His last several decades there were spent as a Computer Systems Architect. He joined IBM in 1971.

Steve joined Common Cause shortly after it was formed in 1970 with a mission to reduce the influence of money in politics. He drifted away after it became clear that Common Cause was not making substantial progress in its mission. He has been active in politics on and off since. For example, he worked for Ross Perot's campaign in 1992.

Steve was born in Alabama, lived in northern Silicon Valley (Fremont, Ca) for 30 years, and moved to Colorado in 2011 because he and his then-wife believed that, while Silicon Valley was a great place to live and work, it was not that good a place to raise their young daughters. He is now divorced and is lucky to be helping two happy teenagers launch themselves on their trajectories in life.

Steve joined the Colorado Forward Party over a year ago and has volunteered with the Infrastructure subcommittee since then. He has participated regularly in the bi-weekly virtual leadership team meetings over the past six months. In those meetings, he has tried to represent not only his own views but the views of other members not in the meeting to the extent that he understands those views. He plans to continue to take that approach if he is elected to the Executive Committee.

Steve believes the current strategic imperatives for our party are to grow our membership, to grow our candidate pipeline, and to fundraise to support events and candidates.

Steve believes we must all acknowledge that if we grow to the size needed to be influential, we are going to experience growing pains. We must accept that we are at times going to be far from perfect, but that’s okay because perfection is the enemy of incremental progress toward our goals. We must all pledge to lead, follow, or get out of the way as we move forward.

Steve believes that American citizens can legitimately disagree about fundamental issues and the truth is that most views are correct some of the time. He therefore believes that policies and legislation crafted to accommodate most views will usually be better than policies and legislation which represent a few views.

Steve believes the purpose of democratic political debate is therefore not to change anyone’s mind. The purpose of democratic political debate is to ensure that the various constituencies understand each other’s positions so that legislation, policies, etc can be crafted which appeal to the broadest possible spectrum of constituents.

Steve believes there are norms, mores, and principles which govern healthy democratic political debate, including criteria which valid objective evidence must meet, but believes there is considerable disagreement nowadays about what is meant by 'valid objective evidence'. He believes that the disagreement grew rapidly in the 1960s with the rise of a dysfunctional counterculture, has continued to grow, and is one fundamental cause of political paralysis nowadays.

Steve believes it is important for the Colorado Forward Party to put a stake in the ground regarding the meaning of 'valid objective evidence' in democratic political debate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:OneSkyWalker

Continuing EC Members

The below Executive Committee members will be retained until summer of 2025.

Dave Ryan (Chair)

I've been a volunteer with the Colorado Forward Party since early 2023 and an Executive Committee member for the past year, serving as Vice Chair and chair of the EC for the past several months. I will be one of four current members to stay on for the next year to complete a two-year term while we elect five new members to the Executive Committee to establish annual At Large EC member staggered elections.

My background includes:

Professional: 20 years at GE and Honeywell designing and building control system products and selling to commercial and defense aerospace customers. I then transitioned to 20 years of leading the implementations of enterprise databases and financial systems.

Community volunteer: 20+ years of adult literacy education in six states, eight years as board member and board chair of a large domestic violence shelter in Phoenix. Fifteen years volunteering at Arizona State University providing financial support for first-generation students.

Political: 20+ years working with community organizations, businesses, and elected officials to improve public policy, providing pathways to higher education and broader access to healthcare. I ran unsuccessfully for Arizona State Senate in 2014, leading to my election as a GOP legislative district chairman in 2015.

Things got weird(er) in the GOP. I became unaffiliated in 2018, retired from work for pay in 2021, moved with my spouse to Aurora in 2020 to be close to family, and continued searching for a political home until I found Forward.

Johannes Plambeck (Secretary)

Johannes serves as the current Secretary of the Colorado Forward Party Executive Committee. As one of its founding members, he has prioritized proper parliamentary procedure during meetings, adhering to Robert's Rules in any and all situations. He has involved himself in data research for candidate targeting and has had exposure to the candidate nominations assembly process, a model for other 3rd parties to follow.

He serves as a senior managing data scientist for Pfizer Inc's North American Commercial Division, where he works on sampling allocation optimization and field force optimization algorithms. He volunteers with the Greater Denver Transit where he works with geographic information system data for identifying capacity upgrade opportunities for the Regional Transportation District of Colorado.

Johannes plans to continue to serve the Forward party however he can and is an ardent supporter of electoral reform. He believes that 3rd parties can serve as a civic education and engagement tool for local communities.

Wendy Petry

Wendy became politically active when she heard Andrew Yang and Lawrence Lessig’s town hall titled Restoring Democracy. She volunteered for Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign and continues to follow his efforts. Wendy moved to Colorado in 2020 and finally met active supporters of the Colorado Forward Party in early 2023. She understands that the political system must change and that it is necessary and possible.

She became one of the first Executive Committee (EC) members and has supported the Party in various ways. The first year was a learning experience, and she still has plenty to learn. Wendy looks forward to sharing her knowledge with new supporters and new EC members as we move into our second year as a minor party in Colorado.

According to Wendy:  "Our new party gets to focus on organizing to make the best use of available active volunteer resources and funding. Our primary goals are party building, candidate recruitment, fundraising, and meeting the legal requirements of maintaining minor Party status."

Wendy would be happy to lead or co-lead due to her background in simplifying and streamlining processes toward improved outcomes. She is also comfortable remaining an at-large EC member.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendy-petry/

Joshua Herr (Vice Chair)

Joshua Herr currently serves as the Chair of the Infrastructure Subcommittee and the Vice Chair of the Executive Committee. He has been involved with the Colorado Forward Party since its fledgling days. He is committed to building a strong, viable Forward Party in Colorado. He prioritizes effective policy change that will give Coloradans more choices in their elections and capability to voice their preferences in candidates. He works in the tech industry.

A quote from Mr. Herr: "Every time I think I'm getting out, they just pull me back in."