Advisory Councils

Ben Moultrie, MBA, PhD

Sue Stash

Wendi Burkhardt

Steve Ewell

Harry Bull, PhD

Kenneth Taylor, PhD

Flo Raitano, DVM

Twice elected Mayor of Dillon, Colorado and founding Executive Director for the Colorado Rural Development Council. She co-authored the Beanpole Legislation for a rural broadband pilot program and served as a Senior Fellow for the Center for the New West.  She was awarded Vice-President Al Gore’s Hammer Award for Reinventing Government for her work with the Colorado Ecosystem Partnership.

Dr. Raitano has served on both the Economic Advisory Council and the Community Development Advisory Council for the 10th District Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.  She served 12 years on the Board of Directors for the Rural Community Assistance Corporation and chaired the Board for the Colorado Association for Manufacturing and Technology, now known as Manufacturer’s Edge.  She served as the first executive director for the I-70 Mountain Corridor Coalition and was appointed by Governor Ritter to serve on the Technical Advisory Committee for the Blue Ribbon Panel on Transportation Finance and Implementation.  In late 2018, she was invited by Governor-elect Polis to serve on his transition team to assist in the selection of new cabinet secretaries for CDOT and DOLA. 

Michael Lightner, Phd

As vice president and academic affairs officer, Michael is the president’s liaison between system administration and the 5,170 tenured, tenure-track faculty and non-tenure track continuing instructors who teach, conduct research and engage in community service on all four University of Colorado campuses.  He is an adviser to CU President Todd Saliman, working closely with his executive staff, the Colorado Department of Higher Education, the Board of Regents’ academic affairs committee, and with chancellors, provosts, deans and other leaders across the CU system. Lightner received his B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Florida and his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.  A professor of electrical, computer and energy engineering, he joined CU-Boulder in 1981 in the area of computer-aided design of integrated circuits. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and Fellow of the AIMBE. Lightner served as President and CEO of the IEEE, a 400,000 member global technical professional organization. He has co-directed a joint research center between Boulder and Denver on Assistive Technology for People with Cognitive Disabilities for the past 12 years. Lightner helped found the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities and served as its associate executive director. He has served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the CU Boulder College of Engineering, Design and Computing and Chair of the Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering department. 

Clayton Lewis, Phd

Clayton Lewis is Professor of Computer Science and Fellow of the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado Boulder.  He is well known for his research on evaluation methods in user interface design. Two methods to which he and his colleagues have contributed, the thinking aloud method and the cognitive walkthrough, are in regular use in software development organizations around the world. He has also contributed to cognitive assistive technology, to programming language design, to educational technology, and to cognitive theory in causal attribution and learning. He was named University of Colorado President’s Teaching Scholar in 1989, a life title signifying the University’s highest award for teaching.  Lewis earned a BA in mathematics from Princeton University, an MS from MIT, for interdisciplinary study in mathematics and linguistics, and a PhD from the University of Michigan in experimental psychology. He was elected to the ACM CHI Academy in 2009, recognizing his contributions to the field of human-computer interaction. In 2011 he was further recognized by the ACM CHI Social Impact Award, for his work on technology for people with cognitive, language, and learning disabilities.

Ron Sokol, MD, FAASLD

Dr. Ronald J. Sokol is Professor of Pediatrics and Vice Chair of Clinical and Translational Research in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine (SOM) and Children's Hospital Colorado. He is the Director and Principal Investigator of the Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute at University of Colorado Denver and the Section Chief of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition in the SOM and the Digestive Health Institute at Children's Hospital Colorado. He holds the Arnold Silverman MD Endowed Chair in Digestive Health. Dr. Sokol received his medical degree from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and completed pediatric residency training and Chief Residency at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He completed fellowship training in Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati. He has been a faculty member at University of Colorado since 1983. As a physician scientist, he is involved in patient care, basic, clinical and translational research and education of fellows, residents, and students.  He has received uninterrupted NIH funding since 1987 and is currently supported by U01, T32, UL1, KL2 and TL1 grants. His recent laboratory research investigates the role of plant sterols and Toll Like Receptor and FXR/LXR signaling in the pathogenesis of parenteral nutrition-associated cholestasis, the immune pathogenesis of biliary atresia, and the role of the gut microbiome in cholestasis.