COMMON SENSE INSTITUTE
Greenwood Village
News: Fresh off her role as director of the National Western Stock Show’s recently completed, $150 million Honoring the Legacy Campaign, Angela Lieurance has stepped into another challenging, yet meaningful job: executive director of Rally Colorado.
Rally Colorado is a new, 10-year initiative of the nonpartisan, Greenwood Village-based Common Sense Institute (CSI). Its goal is to “Turbocharge CSI’s fact-based analysis into real impact for voters, policymakers and communities.”
She will accomplish this by visiting each of Colorado’s 64 counties in Year One to gather direct and diverse feedback on challenges and opportunities therein, reporting back to CSI’s professional economists, researchers and bipartisan topic-expert fellows who publish some 85 reports per year that give Coloradans the information to make common sense decisions in areas that include healthcare, housing, jobs, taxes, agriculture and commerce.
“Our goal is to drive … involvement at the grassroots level, to provide Coloradans with the facts and let them make their own decisions,” Lieurance said.
Rally Colorado was introduced at Style & Substance, a Sept. 9 gathering at The Dome at AMG where about 100 women gathered for drinks, hors d’oeuvres and the opportunity to shop for luxe Western wear at a Double D Ranch popup.
The program featured two brief but impactful panel discussions.
The first, moderated by Lieurance, had Double D founders Cheryl McMullen, Audrey McMullen Franz and Hedy Carter sharing the story of how their brand has grown from basically a kitchen-table project to one that has worldwide popularity. Double D styles are a favorite of numerous celebrities, including country music stars Lainey Wilson and Ella Langley.
“We were young, broke and stupid. We didn’t have any common sense,” is the self-deprecating way co-founder Cheryl McMullen laughingly described Double D’s start, making coats from Indian blankets that were an instant hit.
Their success, Audrey McMullen Franz said, comes from “Perseverance and staying true to our work.” Every collection, Hedy Carter added, “Is a story,” one on which “We all have to agree.”
The second panel, Climate of Women in Business, was moderated by CSI executive director Melissa Osse and featured Tamra Ryan, CSI’s Coors Economic Mobility Fellow and Loren Furman, president/CEO of the Colorado Chamber of Commerce.
They agreed that while there are many challenges — including the high cost, and availability of childcare and housing — Furman noted that Colorado “is still a place where people want to live … and women-owned businesses are doing very well.”
Sharon Magness Blake chaired Style & Substance.
Among the guests:
About the organization: The Common Sense Institute was founded in 2011 to be a nonpartisan research organization dedicated to the protection and promotion of Colorado’s economy.
Website: commonsenseinstituteco.org
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