Program

2023-2024 Program

October 4, 2023

“All Politics is Local”

An “All Politics Are Local” panel featuring our new Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade; El Paso County Board of Commissioners Chair Cami Bremer and Colorado General Assembly Minority Leader Senator Paul Lundeen.

Mayor Yemi

Blessing ‘Yemi’ Mobolade was sworn in as the 42nd Mayor of Colorado Springs on June 6, 2023. This is his first four-year term as mayor. He is the first Black man and immigrant to be elected mayor of Colorado Springs and one of the youngest.

Mobolade moved from Indiana to Colorado Springs in 2010, where he started a church as part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. After identifying a need in downtown Colorado Springs for cultural gathering places, he became one of the first entrepreneurs to invest in downtown after the Great Recession when he co-founded The Wild Goose Meeting House in 2013.

Seeing a greater need for collaboration within the faith community, Mobolade began working as director of outreach and engagement at First Presbyterian Church, where he would go on to co-found COSILoveYou, a nonprofit that unites more than 100 area churches under the common mission of serving the Colorado Springs community.

In 2017, Mobolade co-founded Good Neighbors Meeting House in the Patty Jewett neighborhood to provide an additional gathering place in the downtown area. He also began to leverage his success as an entrepreneur and business owner and began working as the vice president of business retention and expansion at the Colorado Springs Chamber & Economic Development Corporation. Here he was instrumental in caring for local employers and attracting new companies during a period of record job growth for Colorado Springs.

In 2019, Mobolade served the City of Colorado Springs as a small business development administrator. In this role, he established tools to assist entrepreneurs with starting a business, COSOpenForBiz.com and Permit Partner, and led many collaborative efforts across the community’s public and private sectors. Mobolade stepped down from this position in March 2022 to officially launch his mayoral campaign.

Mobolade was born in Nigeria to two bi-vocational pastors. His father was in finance and his mother was a secondary education teacher. At age 17, he immigrated to the United States, following in the footsteps of his brother to pursue the American Dream through education. He has bachelor’s degrees in business administration and computer information systems from Bethel University (Mishawaka, Ind.) and master’s degrees in management and leadership from Indiana Wesleyan University (Marion, Ind.) and theology-intellectual leadership from the A.W. Tozer Theological Seminary, part of Simpson University (Redding, Calif.). 

He lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, Abbey, a nurse and nursing educator, and their three young children.

Commissioner Cami Bremer

Cami Bremer was elected to the Board of County Commissioners District 5 seat in November 2018. District 5 encompasses the center portion of El Paso County, including most of the City of Colorado Springs.

Cami brings broad experience in government and media relations as well as healthcare and non-profit management to her role as a county commissioner. Cami has served as Regional Director for the American Heart Association, Provider & Community Relations Manager for Penrose Cancer Center, Director of Governmental Affairs for the Chamber of Commerce, and Communications Specialist for the City of Colorado Springs, where she was certified in federal emergency management communications.

Cami has a passion for Human Services and cost-effective policies that allows for serving those in need, while incentivizing long term family-centered solutions. Cami also looks forward to collaborating across jurisdictions and organizations for a regional approach to solving current community issues such as homelessness, affordable housing and workforce development.

Cami grew up in Georgia and attended the University of Georgia where she earned her Bachelors of Journalism in Public Relations. After moving to Colorado in 2002, she continued her education with an MBA in Marketing from UCCS.

Cami is married to Eli Bremer (USAFA ’00, OLY ’08) and they have a son named Struthers. On any given weekend, Cami and her family can be found enjoying outdoor activities like hiking, biking, golfing, swimming, running and skiing.

Commissioner Bremer took the oath of office for her second four-year term on January 10, 2023.

Senator Paul Lundeen

For decades Paul Lundeen has experienced success in business and public policy in Colorado. Paul represents Senate District 9 in the Colorado General Assembly. Previously he was elected to the Colorado House of Representatives (HD 19), State Board of Education from the Fifth Congressional District where he served as a member and chairman. He is the founder of numerous small businesses providing services ranging from brain training & learning centers to real estate development to golf course association landscape management, and investment management.

​Paul has worked to advance the cause of charter schools, innovation, and choice in education, supporting the right and responsibility of parents to direct the upbringing and education of their children. An unflagging champion for “Smaller Government, Freer People”, Paul knows a free market approach naturally eliminates bad and outdated ideas and businesses over time, as opposed to government bureaucracies which tend to live on and expand even when proven inefficient. Paul has fought this dynamic in the sphere of education, which is a prime example of the inadequacies of government controlled and managed systems.

​Having spent more than 30 years as a small business owner, Paul has first-hand experience with the detrimental impact of excessive government regulations that hinder job-creating entrepreneurism. He knows the problems and issues job-creators face here in Colorado because he has lived them.  

Since 2000, Paul has served as an El Paso county and state central committee member and long time precinct leader. He worked as a chief of staff to a State Senator and managed a gubernatorial campaign. Paul was a Regent Scholar at the University of Nebraska and after graduating from New York University, where he studied journalism and economics, he was a Washington correspondent with credentials to the White House.

Paul, and his wife Connie of 33 years, raised their two adult children here in Colorado, both graduated from Lewis Palmer high school.

November 14, 2023

The Clarion Project

RSVP for November 14, 2023 Dinner here

Clarion Project’s mission is to make the world safer by identifying and reporting violent extremists across various ideologies, such as potential school shooters, Islamic extremists, and antisemitic tendencies. They provide valuable open-source intelligence information to law enforcement. As a non-profit organization, their efforts have been instrumental in preventing potential attacks on schools, synagogues, churches, diverse communities, and high-profile targets.

This year, Clarion Project will provide over 1,000 credible evidence packages that empower law enforcement to receive briefings and take action.  Of these packages, 101 are specific to potential school shooters.

Clarion Project’s contributions have played a pivotal role in preventing tragic school shootings. By identifying and intervening in potential threats, they have successfully reduced the risk of violence in the United States before it has a chance to escalate to more severe levels.

Jim Penrose

Chief Intelligence Officer, an award-winning, high-ranking official at the National Security Agency (NSA). Jim brings his exceptional expertise in cyber operations and intelligence to his pivotal role as the leader of the Clarion Intelligence Network. At NSA, he spearheaded successful efforts to meticulously target and neutralize radical Islamic terrorists, making invaluable contributions that significantly aided in the capture of Osama Bin Laden.

David Isacoff

A Strategic Advisor with 30+ years of expertise as a National Security Agency (NSA) executive, shaped US Government strategy against online threats as the former Technical Director for Operations for the Signals Intelligence Directorate. His distinguished career includes founding SIGINT forensics and leading critical counterterrorism initiatives, earning prestigious awards for exceptional contributions to national security.

Matt Allen

A Board Member and Strategic Advisor, brings over 32 years of federal law enforcement experience to our organization. As the former Assistant Director for Global Trade Investigations at Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Matt’s expertise in border security, transnational crime, customs, immigration, financial crimes, and intellectual property theft amplifies our ability to effectively protect and secure America’s critical.

January 11, 2024

The Principled Politician: A Story of Enduring Courage

A Colorado man’s courage offers timeless lessons and reminders about the values and principles found in the law. In this presentation, Adam Schrager tells the story of former Colorado Gov. Ralph Carr whose political career was ruined after defending the Constitutional rights of Japanese Americans following the attack at Pearl Harbor. From being lampooned to lionized, we’ll discuss why what happened in 1941-42 remains impactful decades later.

Adam Schrager

Adam Schrager is the Social Impact Storyteller at the American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact where he features the stories of America’s extraordinary and visionary entrepreneurs working to close equity gaps throughout America.

His career as a broadcast journalist at commercial stations in Denver and Wisconsin (La Crosse, Madison, and Milwaukee) as well as at Wisconsin Public Television has earned him nearly 30 Emmy Awards since his career began in the early 1990s. He has covered state legislatures in Colorado and Wisconsin while empowering citizen voices in the process with a focus on policy more than politics.

He’s written four books which have received positive reviews in media outlets like The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and on NPR. His first book, “The Principled Politician,” led to Colorado lawmakers naming the state’s new justice center and a state highway after its subject, former Gov. Ralph Carr, who defended the rights of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor and lost his career as a result.

He co-wrote “The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado (and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care)” with a former Colorado state lawmaker. The book features behind-the-scenes interviews and research never before shared and led to the rare political book endorsed by those on the left and the right.

His most recent Wisconsin-based book is a story of science and true crime. “The Sixteenth Rail: The Evidence, the Scientist and the Lindbergh Kidnapping” tells the story of Arthur Koehler, a wood scientist at the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison who was called the “Sherlock Holmes of his era” as the final prosecution witness in the case against the man accused of kidnapping and killing Charles Lindbergh’s son. NPR’s Science Friday called it one of the best books of 2013 and a “fascinating exploration of a little-known scientist.”

He’s taught upper-level reporting and storytelling classes at Marquette University, the University of Denver and most recently at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also conducts media training and storytelling seminars for state lawmakers, startups, corporate executives, and non-profits around the country.

Schrager has an undergraduate degree in American History from the University of Michigan and a graduate degree in Broadcast Journalism from Northwestern University.

He lives with his wife, Cathy, a second-grade teacher, and their three kids in Madison in whose lunches every day he includes a “Dad” joke sure to make them wince.

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Marisa Wigglesworth, CEO US Olympic and Paralympic Museum