Mission

Inspiring environmental stewardship and fostering community connections through film.

Goals

Educate

Building knowledge and skills to promote environmentally relevant choices

Connect

Bringing together communities, individuals and filmmakers.

Inspire

Motivating change through stewardship and action

Our Team

Nicole Bickford

Festival Director

Nicole's Bio
Nicole has been an active member in the environmental education community of Colorado for the last 20 years. Prior to this role, Nicole was Vice President of Programs and Exhibits at the Butterfly Pavilion, focusing on the management of all education programming, exhibit development, fundraising, and community partnerships. Nicole has contributed her expertise to several Denver environmental education efforts including the development of Colorado’s certification program for environmental educators and the annual planning and implementation of Colorado’s annual statewide Environmental Education Conference. Nicole enjoys traveling the world with her husband and 2 kids. When home, she loves to read and chase her kids down the ski slopes!

Marissa Copan

Festival Event Coordinator

Marissa's Bio
Marissa returns to the CEFF team after 7 years from her time on the board to help make this festival run bright, smooth, and as impactful as it can be! She comes most recently from Morpho Institute, Wee Folk Forest Kindergarten, & Butterfly Pavilion, where she served for ten years in the education department, most recently as the Director of Community Engagement. She has her Masters in Conservation Biology from Miami University & an undergraduate in Environmental Education and Communications from Goucher College. She has received the Governor’s Service Award for her time in AmeriCorps, and also the Denver Rock Stars of the Rockies 30 under 30 award. Her goal is to bring joy and build community by creating authentic learning experiences (and nature play opportunities) that will translate into conservation-based behavior change. She gets to put that into practice, camping, cooking, and spending time outdoors with her 4-year old daughter!

Our Board

Rocky Thompson

Board of Directors - President

Rocky's Bio

Rocky has been involved in film and photography since high school. He has been involved with the Starz Denver Film Festival, the Boulder International Environmental Film Festival, the Cheyenne International Film Festival, and the Boulder International Film Festival. His interest in the environment started at a young age, playing in the streams and mountains of Pennsylvania. Currently Rocky is principle of Gaia Video Productions in Boulder. 

Dave Steinke

Board of Directors - Vice President

Dave's Bio

Dave is a native of Denver, Colorado and graduated from the University of Denver with a BA in Mass Communications. He worked briefly for ABC Wide World of Sports on the summer golf tour. He worked for two years in Waco, Texas at an NBC television affiliate and then two years at an ABC television affiliate in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 

He hired on with the U.S. Forest Service as a videographer for the Pike and San Isabel National Forests and Comanche and Cimarron National Grasslands. After a few years working on a Forest, he transferred into the Regional Office in Lakewood where he was involved in a whole variety of tasks. He retired in 2015 after 38 years of service. He retired as the Assistant Director for External Affairs and ran the Creative Services department which dealt with videotapes, still photography, presentations, exhibits, web content, media training and meeting facilitation. Dave was also involved with fire suppression for his entire Forest Service career and was qualified as a fire photographer, a Type I Incident Information Officer and instructor for beginning and advanced information officer training.

In 2005, Dave co-produced a two-hour documentary film, The Greatest Good, a U.S. Forest Service centennial film on the history of the agency and the evolution of public lands. The show played on PBS for ten years with more than 8,000 screenings on stations across the country, and the international version of the show was released in eight languages.

In 2011 he co-produced a one-hour documentary film, Green Fire: Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for our Time. The Emmy Award winning film screened for a year at film festivals and state premiers and then debuted on Earth Day in April 2013 as a one hour Wisconsin Public Television production on Public Broadcasting Service. It continues to run on PBS and is used as a fundraiser for the Aldo Leopold Foundation.

Dave is also the co-chair of the Colorado Environmental Film Festival that is entering its fourteenth season showing the very best environmental films from around the world every February in Golden, Colorado. He just finished an hour-long documentary on Herman Dingus, Colorado’s Polka King, and always tries to have an entry into the Colorado 48 hour film festival.

He is a science fair judge, volunteer beer-pourer, edits a newsletter for Forest Service retirees, a balloon artist once a year and lives in unincorporated Jefferson County with his wife Sue, a local watercolor artist. Their daughter Erin graduated from the University of Colorado in Boulder and works in the Denver metro area.

 

Karl Brummert

Board of Directors - Treasurer

Karl's Bio
Karl has worked for environmental non-profit organizations for over twenty five years. He has held leadership roles at Denver Audubon, the Theodore Roosevelt Sanctuary and Audubon Center on Long Island, and The New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx.​ In 2008, he took a short break from the non-profit world to work as a documentary film production coordinator in Los Angeles, which included work on the Disneynature film, Wings of Life. Karl is a Colorado native and grew up exploring nature. He enjoys hiking, mountain biking, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and gardening.

Kat Lundahl

Board of Directors - Member at Large

Kat's Bio

Kat currently works as a film editor and her passion is in documentary filmmaking focusing on environmental issues and hopes to one day soon create a feature length documentary. Kat has experienced firsthand the power of building community through supporting film festivals and independent filmmakers. Kat feels that, as filmmakers, we hold an important role to create positive change in this world by helping to tell stories that are not often told.

Jess Beaulieu

Board of Directors - Member at Large

Jess' Bio
Jess Beaulieu is the Animal Law Program Manager at the University of Denver. Prior to this role, she practiced as a public interest attorney in the field of dependency and neglect at Muhaisen & Muhaisen, LLC. Previously, she was a fellow at the Center for Biological Diversity in Denver, CO, advocating for the protection of western wildlife. Jess is passionate about advocating on behalf of animals, people, and the environment to ensure a sustainable future for all.

Dean Berggren

Board of Directors - Member at Large

Dean's Bio
Dean is a licensed CPA and recently joined the CEFF board. He is currently retired after working in both external and internal auditing for over 20 years. He has lived in Mongolia, Russia for several years and travelled for work to many other countries. He is an active outdoorsmen and spends much of the winter skiing and summer river rafting and biking. Before becoming a CPA, Dean lived for six years in
Micronesia, first as a Peace Corps volunteer and then for the Chuuk government. Dean earned a B.A in psychology from the University of Denver and a B.S. in Accounting from Metropolitan State University.
Dean works with other non-profits including the Friends of Micronesia, a Mongolian accounting student scholarship program and the Kawanee Gardens Ditch Company. Dean believes strongly in protecting nature and the environment and in educating and motivating both kids and adults of the critical challenges facing our natural world.

Dr. Darci Martinez

Board of Directors - Member at Large

Darci's Bio

I am delighted to be on the Colorado Environmental Film Festival board. My experience includes community health nursing, family practice, and environmental justice. I care deeply about improving wellness in the communities we work, play, live, and learn. Film is a powerful tool for raising awareness, inspiring action, and promoting understanding of known or suspected disproportionate health risks from cumulative environmental exposures.

Shawna Crocker

CEFF Founder

Shawna's Bio

Shawna Crocker is a Colorado native and graduate in biology and education from Colorado State University.  She has been natural science educator and champion of our environment from early childhood!

After teaching PreK-12th grade science in private, public, urban and rural schools in Colorado and Swaziland, where she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer, she recently retired from the Colorado State Forest Service, where she served as the Colorado Coordinator of Project Learning Tree, for an international environmental education program for teachers and students. 

She helped create the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education (CAEE) and has served on many of its committees, including the State Environmental Education Leadership Council. She founded CEFF in 2005 as a program of the CAEE after attending an environmental film festival in Washington, DC and realizing that Colorado needed such an event to help inspire, educate and motivate our citizens to become committed stewards of our world.  

Shawna has received the Enos Mills Award for Lifetime Achievement in Environmental Education, National Outstanding Project Learning Tree Coordinator Gold Star Award, CSFS Program Excellence Award, CSFS Career Excellence Award, Friend of Science Award from the Colorado Association of Science Teachers, and Retired Environmental Educator Award from CAEE.