Colorado Planned Giving Roundtable -

Featured Members

Josie Stewart - Gift Planning Manager at the Denver Zoo

Josie Stewart might be one of the only fundraising professionals to embark on a planned giving career straight out of college. A native of Kentucky, she had a workstudy job in the development office at Rollins College in Florida. She knew she was interested in nonprofit work, and exposure to the development side helped solidify a path into fundraising. As an environmental science major, she was drawn to a job after graduation with Defenders of Wildlife in Washington D.C., and it happened to be doing planned giving work. That was in 1999 and she hasn’t stopped protecting animals since. After spending several years in D.C. with her husband, they decided to move to Colorado to be closer to his family and undertake starting one of their ...

Katy Herbert Kotlarczyk - Director of Gift Planning & Leadership Giving at University of Colorado

She has gotten a lot of use out of her invisible jet, growing up in Arizona but moving to California for college, then DC, before landing in Colorado six years ago when her husband, Mike, landed a clerkship with a judge in Denver. (He’s now a corporate litigator for Davis Graham.) The working mom of three kids (age five and under!) says she wouldn’t have it any other way. Lucky for both CPGR and the University of Colorado that she so effortlessly manages her multiple roles. Newly minted as Volunteer of the Year at the 2016 CPGR Summer Symposium, Katy has been an omnipresent force for good within CPGR despite her very recent tenure. She joined in 2012 under the Mentor program and quickly ascended to ...

Dave Reed & Russ Shaw

CPGR members Russ Shaw and Dave Reed are at opposite ends of the planned giving experiential curve, but the two have recently forged a relationship through the CPGR mentoring program. Both are long-time Colorado residents, having each moved here to take advantage of the great outdoors. They share not only an interest in the outdoors and an appreciation for planned giving, but a major mid-life career change. A tax consultant with a Big Four accounting firm, Russ had been tapped to start up a new office in Denver and was on the partner track. But something wasn’t doing it for him. On his bike that day in 1998, he found himself contemplating the alternatives. A clue to what came next is that he’d served as volunteer chair ...

Mike Jackson

Mike Jackson is a Colorado native—he grew up in Littleton and attended CSU, earning a BS in Health Science there and an MA in Organizational Management from the University of Phoenix. He was on track for health club management when he took a wellness job with a tech company and worked closely with the YMCA, one of their clients. This led to his first nonprofit foray, as Executive Director of the Duncan Family YMCA. His health and wellness background served him well in this role, but without direct fundraising experience, he relied on a mentor from another YMCA who had retired to the area to help him navigate his first six months. Fortunately, the Y has a very well-honed development program (they literally “wrote the ...

Leslie Karotkin

2015 CPGR Volunteer of the year - Being named the 2015 CPGR Volunteer of the Year is an honor that Leslie feels very humble and grateful to receive, especially knowing the recognition comes from colleagues in the gift planning field she so admires and respects. Leslie Karotkin remembers her first-ever job as being “mainly entertaining,” wrapping Christmas gifts at a department store when she was 16. Like many jobs to follow, she seized the opportunity to get her foot in the door, in this case, for non-seasonal work in the lingerie department, which she admits was “not exactly every sixteen year old girl’s dream job to fit bras for older women.” Who knew that an early job in “foundations” would lead to a career in Foundations? These ...

Krista Boscoe, JD – Director of Development Denver Jewish Day School

When Krista Boscoe accepted the Volunteer of the Year Award at the 2017 CPGR Summer Symposium, most in attendance at the luncheon probably weren’t surprised she took her podium moment not only to thank everyone, but to encourage attendees to join her and become a CPGR Legacy Partner. Read more →
29th Annual Summer Symposium – 2017

The 29th Annual Summer Symposium was held August 28th and 29th at Hilton Inverness Hotel in Englewood to a sold-out crowd of more than 320 professionals from throughout Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, North Carolina, and Texas! This total includes 140 first time Symposium attendees! Read more →

Featured Members

Josie Stewart - Gift Planning Manager at the Denver Zoo

Katy Herbert Kotlarczyk - Director of Gift Planning & Leadership Giving at University of Colorado

Dave Reed & Russ Shaw

Mike Jackson

Leslie Karotkin

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