Board of Directors
James T. Polsfut, President
Throughout his 25-year career, Jim Polsfut has specialized in Latin America as a region and financial services management as a profession, while devoting himself significantly to community involvement.
Latin America
Mr. Polsfut currently serves as the president of the Cordillera Foundation, a 25-year-old 501c3 organization devoted to international grant-making to Mexico. In support of the international community service mission of the Foundation, he does not accept compensation. Earlier in his career, Mr. Polsfut lived and worked in Mexico City for the General Electric Company from 1991 to 1996 as the general manager of GE Capital RFS, SA de CV.
Mr. Polsfut has traveled extensively throughout Latin America and Spain, in part as a result of three international fellowships awarded to him: a Harvard University Trustman Fellowship in eight Latin American countries and Spain in 1984, an International Rotary Foundation Fellowship in Costa Rica in 1983, and an American Marshall Memorial Fellowship in Spain and other European countries in 1999.
As a complement to his professional work and fellowships in Latin America, Mr. Polsfut has written freelance articles on the region for Business Mexico, Points West, and the Stanford Business School Magazine, among other periodicals, taught at University College at the University of Denver, and engaged in community work in the region over the years as interim executive director of the North American Institute, board member of Special Olympics Mexico, chair of the advisory board of the IPODERAC Orphanage for street children in Puebla, Mexico, chair of the Colorado Advisory Council on Mexico, and founder of Puente Colorado, a Denver civic organization created to raise and distribute funds for not-for-profit organizations throughout Mexico. Mr. Polsfut also is a speaker on international philanthropy, most recently in October 2008 at the Encuentro Nacional de las Organizaciones de la Sociedad Civil 2008 in Mexico City, sponsored by SEDESOL, the social services secretariat of the Mexican federal government.
Mr. Polsfut is bilingual in Spanish.
Financial Services Management
From the fall of 2003 to the spring of 2008, Mr. Polsfut helped to create a private bank and trust company called First Western Trust Bank, headquartered in Denver. In that capacity, he served as president of First Western Development Corporation, a division of the bank responsible for corporate acquisitions. By the spring of 2008, First Western Trust Bank had grown its assets from acquisitions by $2.25 billion.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Polsfut served as the executive chairman of the board of Cordillera Asset Management; as Senior Vice President of Horizon Guide, a wholly-owned start-up company owned by T Rowe Price; as a general manager for GE Capital in Mexico and the United States; as Denver Mayor Federico Peña’s administrative assistant for finance for the City and County of Denver; and as an associate in the public finance office of Smith Barney.
Community Service Involvement
Mr. Polsfut currently chairs the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, the governing body of the 22 public universities and colleges in the State of Colorado, appointed by Governor Bill Ritter in January of 2007. He also serves on the board of the University of Denver Social Science Foundation and the Child and Family Development Committee of the Rose Community Foundation and as a continuing elder of the Montview Boulevard Presbyterian Church.
As chairman of the non-partisan 2008 Rocky Mountain Roundtable during the Democratic National Convention held in Denver in August of 2008, Mr. Polsfut organized and oversaw ten roundtables on topics including climate change, global poverty, education, and philanthropy, among others. Over a three-day period, 17,000 audience members attended the 2008 Rocky Mountain Roundtable, which incorporated 150 roundtable participants including Ted Turner, Tom Brokaw, Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, Tom Daschle, Richard Gephardt, Mary Robinson, Andrew Young, Tim Wirth, John Podesta, Carol Browner, Hernando de Soto, and Sir Nicholas Stern, as well as roughly twenty governors, US senators, and members of Congress.
In November of 2007, Mr. Polsfut ended two years of service as one of two founding co-chairs of Denver’s Road Home, a $50 million plan organized in metro-Denver to combat homelessness over a ten-year period. Previously, he served as chairman of the board of the Urban Peak shelter for homeless and runaway youth and as chair of the Governor’s Council on Housing and the Homeless. His community involvement also includes service as treasurer of the Mi Casa Resource Center for Women and as a board member of Open World Learning, the New America High School, the Latin American Educational Foundation, and the Arvada Council for the Arts and Humanities, among other organizations. In 1998, Mr. Polsfut was the Democratic candidate for Colorado State Treasurer.
Education
Mr. Polsfut earned an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1989 and an undergraduate degree in government from Harvard University in 1983.
Personal Information
Mr. Polsfut lives in Arvada, Colorado, and has one son, Javier, age 15.