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About Us

The Mile High Business Alliance is a non-profit membership organization of local Denver Metro businesses and supporters committed to nourishing our community through enhancing local business - building a sustainable economy which provides a healthy environment, meaningful employment and strong communities.

We see the Denver Metro community of businesses as a laboratory for innovation and economic transformation. We work with local businesses that have the autonomy to make any transformational change in their business that they can imagine… reexamining where we buy goods and services, how we consume energy, grow and distribute our food, build homes, and even, how we define success in business. Mile High Business Alliance is supporting a community of innovators in green building, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, supporting independent businesses in town centers, and mentoring a new breed of entrepreneurs that have designed their business with a sustainable vision.

In autumn of 2006, several initial meetings were held to determine the interest of business owners in forming an alliance to promote local business. After the idea cooled over the winter and spring, a few of us decided to lead the charge to make the business alliance a reality. We incorporated the Mile High Business Alliance on August 1, 2007. Read on to learn more about the leaders and partners in the Business Alliance.

Directors

Neil Strandberg

Neil Strandberg, President

Neil Strandberg grew up in Denver, leaving only briefly to attend Macalester College in St Paul, MN and work a year's stint as a bookseller in Marin County, CA. He returned to Denver in 1989 and has since been a member of the Tattered Cover Book Store where he currently serves as manager of operations.

Neil is active in the bookselling community and works with colleagues and organizations around the country to support independent book retailing. In 2007 he received the Gordon Saul Bookseller of the Year Award from the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association.

Neil and his wife Suzanne live in Centennial with their two young children, Elin and Wilhelm.

Sarah Wells

Sarah Wells, Co-Founder and Secretary

Sarah is an Associate Publisher of the ReDirect Guide. A local Tetris champion, Sarah adds her commitment to sustainability and nifty fashion sense to the Alliance.
Tim MartinezTim Martinez, Treasurer

Tim currently works in the Office of Economic Development for the City and County of Denver. This role involves the management and creation of programs designed to assist Denver businesses to grow and add jobs to the economy.

Previously Tim was the Director of Business Development for the Colorado Credit Union League, District Manager for MEMBER Financial Services and the Executive Director of the US/Mexico Chamber of Commerce.

Tim holds a Masters Degree from the University of Denver Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS) with an emphasis on development in Latin America and a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from Colorado State University.

Tim is a fourth generation Coloradan. He grew up in Arvada, has been married for 12 years and spends most of his time with his 3 sons aged 5, 7, and 8 as a soccer coach and skateboarding apprentice. He releases stress playing competitive soccer and riding his mountain bike. Tim currently lives in Lakewood, Colorado.

Arthur Brock

Arthur Brock, Co-Founder

Arthur’s life has revolved around the theme of innovation and systems for social change. In high school, he crafted a new language – one that could be processed by computers and contain, embedded within it, a more empowering cosmology and metaphysics. He pursued this interest in college by designing a degree in Artificial Intelligence focusing on Natural Language Processing.

After college, Arthur researched non-traditional methods of social change and realized that instead of opposing established systems, more could be accomplished by creating healthy alternatives. His habitual inventiveness also led him to design a highly-efficient, multi-fuel turbine engine with the potential to yield significant environmental impact.

His corporate career started in Natural Language Processing at General Motors, then continued Chrysler in Expert Systems. Leaving the corporate giants, Arthur started a consulting business, Artful Solutions, a custom software development firm building management tools for small businesses. At this time, he also founded and published the Journal of Integral Living while building a holistic health center, leading youth groups, and hosting community salons.

Continuing his commitment to youth, he started the Foundation for Inventive Learning, which created immersive programs and participatory learning communities, and sponsored the first democratic free school in Colorado, which still operates today.

Arthur applied this approach for building learning communities to business. He gathered together his own “dream team,” and launched Dream Team Technologies to demonstrate the viability of participatory business models. Dream Team developed software for online collaboration and community building and with Arthur’s leadership, became listed as one of Colorado’s fastest-growing privately-held companies, was a finalist for Denver Small Business of the Year, and won the Colorado Ethics in Business Award in 2001.

Seeing the effectiveness of his creative solutions for managing incentives and performance which kept a poorly funded Internet business alive and growing through the dot-com bubble burst, Arthur began developing innovative systems of currencies and community incentives to unleash resource flows and engage people's participation. He founded Targeted Currency Networks and implemented several incentive systems for organizations, conferences, and communities to shape patterns of participation, reputation, and trust. He has been recognized as a leader in this emerging currencies field.

His current software company, The Geek Gene, has been building an extremely flexible platform for online communities and currencies with the ability to evolve rapidly based on community interaction and feedback. All of the online directory and community feedback tools for the Mile High Business Alliance are built on this platform.

Heidi BeltzerHeidi Baltzer, Director

Career Highlights:
  • Proud grad of Lakewood High School in 1999. Left hours later for Europe.
  • Moved to New Orleans in 1999. Proud Tulane drop out of 2001.
  • Moved home after Katrina. If defined by any one adjective for my entire life it is poetess. Or maybe barista. Being an entrepreneur is just in the blood.
  • Manager, Neutral Ground, non-profit coffeeshop dedicated to folk music. Oct 2000-June 2001.
  • Barista, manager, happily a Rue de la Course #4 girl from May 2001- Katrina.
  • Ran Dragon’s Den Poetry reading for a year or two. Waitressed there for a summer.
  • Made business for the first time with Think Tank Press in September of 2002. Closed her sadly in July of 2004.
  • Founding member of the New Orleans Geek Society, a guerrilla marketing co-op for indie media companies, June 2005. It died with Katrina.
  • Purchased Cafe Europa 364 days post storm, August 28th 2006. Yay! Now all I want is more cafes....
Skills include:
awesome coffee
making lots of attention out of nothing with no money
graphics software of various types
creative writing
coming up with lots of crazy (and often great) ideas

Staff

Mickki Langston

Mickki Langston, Co-Founder and Executive Director

With passion for community building and local business, Mickki brings her many years of broad experience to the day-to-day development and management of the Mile High Business Alliance. Starting her career as a dishwasher and janitor, her work has also included property management and leasing, web site development, bookkeeping, sales and marketing, and various positions in the restaurant industry. Her strangest work includes being a school bus driver, lunch lady and kindergarten teacher. She has over nine years experience working with non-profits; first as a volunteer with organizations such as Colorado Youth at Risk, then as a Program Director for the Colorado State Patrol Family Foundation.

A social entrepreneur, she co-founded Targeted Currencies Network, LLC in 2004. The focus of TCN is leveraging trust and information systems for community building and economic development. This work has prepared her to design programs for MHBA that bring businesses together to strengthen our experience of community.

When she's not working to build stronger communities, Mickki marvels at the worms in her large garden and dances with bees. She wishes she could practice yoga more often, and is grateful for the many amazing friends and co-conspirators in her life.
Sarah Marden, Membership Coordinator

Originally from Massachusetts, Sarah graduated from the Governor’s Academy of Byfield, MA in 1999. After a few years of travelling, she settled in Durango, CO where she studied Sociology and Political Science at Fort Lewis College, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities in 2005. Having just recently moved north, Sarah is excited to get to know and become involved in the Denver community.
BALLE member

 

We are a member of the national Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), a network of over 50 networks dedicated to nourishing a local economy.

Find out more about the businesses and organizations we're partnering with to build the Mile High Business Alliance.