Meet the Board

Our Growing Up Boulder (GUB) board represents local and national thought leadership in children's rights, education, social justice, entrepreneurship, systems-change, strategic planning and fundraising.

Diane Hirschhorn

Over the past two decades, Diane Hirschhorn co-managed a wealth management practice at Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and First Republic Bank. She addressed the private banking and investment needs of an exclusive group of affluent families around the country and dedicated her career to helping entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, Fortune 500 executives, private business owners, and entertainers navigate the complexities of significant wealth.

Today, Diane focuses on helping entrepreneurs and students achieve financial independence, bringing the techniques she once used for high-net-worth clients to the general public. She currently teaches MBA students and undergraduates in Advanced Portfolio Management, Investments, and Personal Finance, and also serves as a consultant to JP Morgan and other entities.
Managing significant wealth requires insight, perspective, and intellectual capital.

Diane holds a B.A. in Economics from Cornell University and an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Business, and she currently teaches at the University of Colorado. In 2013, Barron’s named her one of the top advisors in Colorado. From 2006–2008, she was selected as one of Barron’s Top 100 Female Advisors. In 2020, she received the Marinus Smith Award for making a positive impact on students’ lives and was also selected as a Daniels Fund Faculty Ambassador.

Polly Fields

Polly Fields has been working in philanthropy for more than 25 years in a number of fields: global health, education, technology, and the arts. She has held leadership positions in the private and nonprofit sectors, and also serves as a Trustee for her family’s foundation. Polly has devoted her personal and professional life to protecting human rights for local and global communities around the world. 

Most recently, Polly was Head of Social Impact at Dropbox and launched the Dropbox Foundation prior to the company going public in 2018. In addition to developing the company’s human rights portfolio, she spearheaded employee giving, developed community engagement partnerships, and supported the company’s first sustainability efforts. Prior to Dropbox, Polly spent 8 years in public affairs and government affairs roles at Gilead Sciences, a company known for its HIV/AIDS and viral hepatitis treatments. She focused on expanding Gilead’s treatment access efforts in the developing world, the Gilead Foundation, and health policy initiatives, working in close collaboration with U.S. and international policymakers, multilateral donor organizations, academic institutions, clinicians, and NGOs. Polly was also the first Chief of Staff for President Clinton’s HIV/AIDS Initiative, working in Africa and the Caribbean to partner with country governments to develop and implement national HIV/AIDS care and treatment plans.  
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Polly earned her undergraduate degree from Wake Forest University and an MBA from the University of Michigan. She serves as co-chair of the Board at WITNESS and as an executive committee member of the Board at the Colorado Chautauqua Association. She is involved with Flatirons Elementary School and Next Chapter. She lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband and two sons. 

Warren Binford

Warren Binford is an international children’s rights scholar and advocate. She is the inaugural W.H. Lea Endowed Chair for Justice in Pediatric Law, Policy and Ethics at the University of Colorado where she is a Professor of Pediatrics, Professor of Law (by courtesy), and a Core Faculty Member in the Center for Bioethics and the Humanities. She is the Director of Law, Policy & Ethics at the Kempe Center on the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect. Prior to joining CU, Warren represented numerous children and families in the Child and Family Advocacy Clinic she founded and ran for 16 years at Willamette University in Oregon. She also has served as an inner-city teacher, a CASA, a foster parent, and co-founded a micro-school nonprofit.

Warren has published a wide variety of 80+ works and given hundreds of presentations worldwide. Media appearances on children’s issues include CNN, BBC, NBC, NPR, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Newsweek, Washington Post, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and many others. From 2017 to 2019, she served on a multidisciplinary team interviewing hundreds of children and families arriving to the United States. Those interviews became the narratives of the award-winning children’s book, Hear My Voice/Escucha Mi Voz. Warren has been both a Fulbright Scholar in South Africa and the inaugural Fulbright Canada-Palix Foundation Distinguished Visiting Chair in Brain Science and Child and Family Health and Wellness. She holds a BA, summa cum laude with distinction, in Literature and Psychology and an EdM from Boston University and a JD from Harvard Law School.

​Professor Binford enjoys spending time in the mountains with her husband and children snowboarding, skiing, horseback riding, hiking, and backpacking.

Charlotte O'Donnell

Charlotte O'Donnell is a bilingual city parks planner, dedicated to deep community engagement and great design.  In her day-job, she collaborates with Growing Up Boulder on the Violet (soon to be "Primos") Park project via her role at Parks and Recreation.  She is also committed to taking climate action.  During her year abroad in Talca, Chile, she worked with the municipal government and a team of graduate students on "Re-imagining Campus, Revitalizing the City: Feasibility for earthquake reconstruction in Talca." Charlotte received her bachelor's degree in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley.

Growing Up Boulder December 2022 board meeting: from left to right: (back row) Cathy Hill, Mark Davison, Felicia Naranjo Martinez, Erin Saunders, Sarabeth Berk, Bernadette Stewart, Mara Mintzer; (bottom row) Warren Binford, Jenny Donovan, Debbie Brown, Kazuyo Morita, Aidan Chopra.

Elizabeth Henna

Elizabeth’s broad array of governmental, nonprofit, and business experience focuses on promoting human, especially children’s, health and welfare in a variety of capacities. She is currently working as a birth and postpartum doula supporting families welcoming new babies. She also volunteers at Boulder Community Foothills Hospital providing newborn hearing screenings. Her most recent board experience is a decade of service on Friends School’s Community Board, which she chaired through a head search and the school’s physical and programmatic expansion to include middle school and a second campus. Her prior work experience includes serving as the assistant director of a charity providing dental care for uninsured children in the metro Denver area and the Western Slope of Colorado and serving as legislative director for a U.S. Representative and staff member of a congressional subcommittee focused on environmental research. She also has international nonprofit experience as a volunteer in US AID programs promoting democracy, public health, and environmental reform in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
A native of Austin, Elizabeth Henna has lived in the Boulder area since 2003.  She holds a BA in history from Williams College and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

Bernadette Stewart

Bernadette Stewart started her career at CU Boulder over 20 years ago in the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) Academic Advising Center. 

​The CAS includes of 45+ academic units, programs, and centers, 1300 faculty, 400 staff, and over 18,000 undergraduate students.  Bernadette is the appointing authority for CAS the university and classified staff, and is in charge of CAS personnel, and wellness initiatives.  She serves as an advisor to seven deans and more than 45+ faculty chairs and directors on faculty affairs and HR-related matters including: recruitment, compensation, onboarding, employee engagement and development, performance management, evaluation and merit, dispute resolution and progressive discipline, leave administration, and resignations and retirements.

Bernadette’s interests include civic engagement that encourages social justice, equity, and access for all.  She serves on the Workforce Boulder County board and Growing Up Boulder.  Bernadette works to building strong relationships across CU Boulder, and beyond, in order to offer strategies and solutions to critical business challenges.  Her intersectional identities as a multiracial, working class, hetero, cis gender woman have caused her to experience life in the margins.  Her experience has taught her that students, faculty, and staff need to see and hear reflections of themselves, which is why she is called to search for and cultivate connectivity, challenge barriers, fight for equity, and to seek inclusion. 

Bernadette received her BA in Anthropology, and Art/Art History with a minor in Ethnic Studies, and her MA in Educational Foundations Policy and Practice from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Bryan Bowen

Bryan Bowen has been a practicing architect since graduating from Carnegie Mellon University in 1995. He is dedicated to the design of sustainable structures of all scales that serve client needs and that create thriving neighborhoods that are great to live in. Bryan founded Caddis Collaborative in 2002 as bb:a.

Bryan approaches our work with a sense of humility, humor, and professionalism. Clients comment on Bryan’s ability to distill the chaos of development and construction in a logical and insightful way, creating a bubble of calm around their process.

An expert in sustainability and passive solar design, Bryan was a LEED Champion during the program’s pilot phase for the Oquirrh Park Speed Skating Oval for the 2002 Olympics, has been trained in Passive House and the Living Building/Community Challenge, and is a housing wonk with an international reputation for his accomplishments and leadership in cohousing. He was named as the AIA Architect of the Year in 2015 by the Northern Colorado AIA chapter. He was the recipient of the Colorado Green Building Guild’s Leadership Award 2019. Caddis has become a well-respected leader in market-rate housing, affordable housing, and cohousing, always with an eye to creating beautiful, innovative, highly functioning communities.

Bryan served on the City of Boulder’s Planning Board for two terms (including several years as board chair) and sat as an ex-officio member on the Landmarks Board, the Housing Advisory Board, and the Design Advisory Board. He is a past board member for the Cohousing Association of the United States. He now sits on the boards of Better Boulder (as vice chair of the Leadership Team), Better Housing Colorado (the BHC, formerly Boulder Housing Coalition), and Growing Up Boulder. Board service with the City of Boulder especially has honed Bryan’s understanding of process and local government. He has empathy for city staff and publicly elected and appointed officials and their role with the review process. Bryan’s experience has informed Caddis’s approach to projects in Boulder and other municipalities, enabling Caddis to streamline the process for getting projects approved. Bryan has formed strong connections in government and in the local community.

A natural connector of people, Bryan Bowen quite literally walks the talk of community and place-making. Caddis’s office is located in Boulder’s Holiday Neighborhood, an award-winning, mixed-income, mixed-use, new urbanist neighborhood Caddis helped to design. On any given weekday, you’ll find Bryan walking from the Caddis office to Spruce Confections for a cup of coffee. On the way, he’ll greet people, stop to chat, and introduce a fellow staff member to those he meets. Just a short block from the Caddis office is Wild Sage Cohousing, where Bryan and his wife lived for eighteen years with their two kids. Bryan was not only the architect for Wild Sage, but he became a deeply involved member as well. It all comes full circle: home, office, neighborhood, community, the City of Boulder, the state of Colorado, and communities across North America.

Jodi Hubble