Staff & Board

Charisse McAuliffe started GenGreen in the Spring of 2007 with the intentions of creating a website that would bring together the green businesses and organizations around the state of Colorado for environmentally conscious consumers to find them locally and support them more easily. In under one year time, GenGreenlife.com grew to cover this information in all 50 states in the US, and by the fall of 2008, with over 35,000 listings it is the largest resource online for people looking to live a environmentally conscious lifestyle with a local focus.

With a passion for collaboration McAuliffe continues to expand the business model of GenGreen and her own life personally by forming strong strategic partnerships with local and national organizations significant to the environmental movement. It is her belief that the solution to our planet’s struggle lies in the strength we will find in one another.  Charisse was recently named one of the top 40 business leaders of under 40 for 2008 by the Northern Colorado Business Report and was a 2007 International Femtor Awards Emerging Leader Finalist. When Charisse is not working to save the planet, she’s spending time with her two wonderful daughters, Kylah and Abigail.

A creative entrepreneur since her twenties, Dani has been managing businesses and employees, developing operational systems and cultivating ideas in various fields including commercial construction development, manufacturing and family entertainment. Dani is a natural project manager and applies those skills and her broad business experience as well as her degree in psychology from George Washington University to all her endeavors.  With a small chain of bowling centers she owns with her husband, Matt Hoeven, thriving in Northern Colorado, Dani found an opportunity to carve out time to turn her passion for music and Fort Collins into a non-profit called SpokesBUZZ Fort Collins that is devoted to globally promoting the sound and culture of Fort Collins in order to positively impact the Fort Collins economy.  She is the founder and president of that organization and is committed to its success.

Additionally, Dani serves as a Director for the Sustainable Living Association.  Dani believes in collaboration and strives to bring organizations and businesses together with the community to achieve success.  Dani and her husband, Matt Hoeven and their three daughters enjoy the beautiful outdoor activities that are available to them in Fort Collins in their leisure time.

Bryan Dennis a planning and strategy consultant who assists  and small businesses grow and thrive. Raised in Colorado, Bryan and his wife Maggie moved to Fort Collins from Washington, DC in 2010 to live healthy lives and help contribute to the well being of the Fort Collins community. His career experience includes management positions at Tucker Alan, Inc. (a business and litigation consulting firm), Discovery Communications, Inc. (a media company), Gifford’s Ice Cream and Candy Co. (an entrepreneurial start-up), the American Psychological Association (a non-profit organization serving the psychology profession) and the Rocky Mountain Innosphere (a business incubator).

Emily has a BA in Community Development, and a background in Non-Profit fundraising, development and volunteer coordination. In 2005 Emily started her own business in Real Estate sales with Keller Williams Realty. She has a strong interest in Community-based Real Estate deals and Green Building. Emily plans to be a LEED AP before 2009.

Born and raised in Larimer County, Emily’s main interests include: Sustainable Community Development, Smart Growth, to planning cities around local food, local business, multi-modal transportation and knowing your neighbor! My goal is to help Larimer County be a progressive leader as a Relocalized community. Emily started volunteering with SLA in 2006, and has served on the Fair Steering Committee since 2007. She also devotes weekly time to other local efforts such as The Food Policy Council Task Force, Eat Local, and Happy Heart Farm.

Doug Odell is Founder and Co Owner of Odell Brewing Company in Fort Collins, Colorado. While his passion for brewing is clear, he believes that any business has an obligation to support the community in which it calls home. He also believes that as a manufacturing business, Odell Brewing Company has an impact on the environment and should strive to make that impact as small as possible through reduction, reuse, and recycling of resources, and minimizing waste streams. He believes any company can thrive while still adopting sustainable business practices.

Some of the efforts he has helped develop are investing in wind power for 100% of the breweries needs, adopting water savings practices that are so important in the state of Colorado, and committing to the installation of a photovoltaic system with their current expansion.

Doug was born in Los Angeles and graduated in 1975 from Occidental College in Los Angeles where he was a three year NAIA All American in track and field, and actually attended classes too. Doug, his wife Wynne, and their children, Corey and Riley, have made Fort Collins their home since 1989.

John has had a long-term interest and career in ecology, ecosystems conservation, and sustainability having worked on these topics for the last 45 years in government, academic, and nonprofit settings. In government, he has been a Smithsonian Institution scientist and later a White House Fellow in the Carter Administration. In academics, he has been a faculty member at the Michigan State University, University of North Dakota, Tufts University, and Florida Gulf Coast University. In nonprofit organizations, he has been chief scientist for the Massachusetts Audubon Society; founding president and senior fellow for Mainewatch Institute; and president and CEO of The Conservancy of Southwest Florida. He has a BA in anthropology and zoology from the University of Kansas and a MS and PhD in ecology and zoology from Michigan State University.

He has a special interest in sustainability and the interrelationships between human environmental, economic, and social adaptations and mal-adaptations. He and his wife Jean built a sustainable house in Redstone Canyon near Loveland, became full time residents in July 2010, and are writing a book about building their sustainable house.

Matt works for Fort Collins Utilities where he is responsible for managing the design and construction of water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure projects. He has been a part of the Fort Collins community since 1993 when he moved to Fort Collins to attend Colorado State University, earning a BS and MS in Civil Engineering.

He is passionate about his work as an engineer because he believes basic water services are essential to a sustainable community. His primary interests are working to find sustainable solutions to the issues of stormwater management and ageing water and wastewater infrastructure. He has been a member of Fort Collins Utilities’ “Core Sustainability Team” since 2008 working to develop a culture of sustainability within the organization. Outside of work, Matt enjoys bicycling, gardening, raising chickens and pressing apple cider with his neighbors.

Lara Williams is a passionate supporter of creating greener homes, whether via new construction or remodeling existing buildings. As the founder and Managing Broker of The Green Team Real Estate–a local independent residential real estate company which specializes in more sustainable homes– she shares her expertise with buyers and sellers on a daily basis.

She is a certified EcoBroker, and has done considerable additional education in green building, including completing the Green Building Certificate Program at CSU’s Institute for the Built Environment. Lara is active in a number of local sustainability-focused organizations. She serves as the co-chairwoman of Membership Committee of the Northern Colorado Branch of the US Green Building Association (USGBC). She is also a member of the Fort Collins Board of Realtor’s Sustainability Committee. In 2007 she founded and continues to organize the popular Fort Collins Green Drinks events, which bring together green minded community members for networking, socializing and educational opportunities each month.

Lara has a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Warwick Business School in Coventry, England and has previously worked in marketing, product management and consulting positions, including entrepreneurship training in Prague, Czech Republic just following the Velvet Revolution. When she isn’t working or volunteering you can probably find her enjoying the Colorado outdoors doing one of her favorite activities, which include skiing, snowshoeing, hiking, mountain biking, and running.

Jim Kelly is CEO and founder of Syscom Services, headquartered in Silver Spring Maryland. For over 25 years Jim has provided expertise to associations and non-profits in how to use technology, the web, new media and social networking to improve marketing, communications, fund raising and operations. Jim has been a speaker at numerous conferences and expositions around the country, focusing on emerging technologies and trends. For the past 16 years Jim has split his time between Washington, DC and Fort Collins where he and his wife Betsy Markey raised their three children.