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
Marissa Copan
Festival Event Coordinator
Marissa's Bio
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
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' Bio
Dean's Bio
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.
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.