Jill joins her fellow Colorado natives in saying welcome to all of our transplants! She was born at Fitzsimons Hospital and lived in various places in the U.S. and Canada, always returning to the Denver Metro area. She attended public school in Denver, then went to the University of Northern Colorado for a BA in English with a history minor. After working at Auraria in the bookstore, AHEC Career Center, and the CU-Denver CLAS Natural and Physical Sciences division, she decided to go back to school and earn a Master of Humanities degree. She worked as the MH Graduate Research Assistant for several years while working on this degree. Her thesis project was an exploration of the “femme fatale” archetype in the 1940s American film noir genre, from the fine art, literary and cultural psychology points of view. She has two grown children who still live in Colorado.
Jill has worked at CU Denver exclusively since the 1980s, holding various positions in CLAS, Public Relations and Publications Office, Graduate School and the CU Succeed program. Along the way, she served a few years on the CU Denver Staff Council and was co-president at one point. Even in those earlier years, Staff Council strove to build a voice for staff as part of academic decision-making, address salary disparity and compression, and improve professional development opportunities for staff, plus the usual staff appreciation events.
Having returned to work as a post-retiree at CU Denver, Jill finds the familiarity of the Auraria Campus appealing, with CLAS as her work family. She looks forward to applying her historical experience to current staff concerns, helping our college staff governance body become a trailblazer for parity and equality in higher education.