HONORARY DIRECTORS
In Memory of Tony Blankley, 1948-2012
Member of The Steamboat Institute Honorary Board since its inception
For more than 25 years, Tony was at the intersection of national politics, media and public policy. Tony served as press secretary to then Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich. Prior to his career on Capitol Hill, Tony served President Ronald Reagan as a speechwriter and senior policy analyst.
Read more about Tony Blankley.
Bob Beauprez
Former Congressman and Editor-in-Chief of “A Line of Sight”
Bob Beauprez is a Colorado native. He was raised on a third generation dairy farm near Lafayette, and spent 20 years in partnership with his parents and brother in that operation marketing their animals across the globe. Following the dairy career, Bob purchased and managed a community bank growing assets from 4 to over 400 million in 12 years. Additionally, he managed the family’s real estate development creating a 1500 residential unit golf course community. In 2002, Bob was elected as the first representative from Colorado’s seventh congressional district, and re-elected in 2004. While in Congress, he served on the Ways & Means, Transportation, and Veterans Committees. He was the Republican nominee for Governor in 2006. Most recently, Bob has published his first book, A Return to Values, and is editor-in-chief of an e-magazine, A Line of Sight. But, his greatest enjoyment comes from his buffalo breeding ranch in the northern Colorado Mountains where he and his wife of 40 years love to spend time with their four children and three grandchildren.
Peter Brookes
The Heritage Foundation
Peter Brookes is a senior fellow for national security affairs at the Heritage Foundation. Peter is also a member of the congressional US-China Commission and a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University. He previously served as a deputy assistant secretary of defense, Capitol Hill staffer, CIA officer, State Department official and naval officer.
Ann Coulter
Best Selling Author and Syndicated Columnist
Ann Coulter is the author of seven New York Times bestsellers —Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America (January 2009);If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans (October, 2007); Godless: The Church of Liberalism (June 2006); How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)(October, 2004); Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (June 2003); Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right (June 2002); and High Crimes and Misdemeanors:The Case Against Bill Clinton (August 1998).
Coulter is the legal correspondent for Human Events and writes a popular syndicated column for Universal Press Syndicate.
She is a frequent guest on many TV shows, including The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Early Show, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Hannity, The O’Reilly Factor, The Glen Beck Show, HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, and has been profiled in numerous publications, including TV Guide, the Guardian (UK), the New York Observer, National Journal, Harper’s Bazaar, and Elle magazine. She was the April 25, 2005 cover story of Time magazine.
James Geringer
Former Governor of WY, Director of Policy and Public Sector Strategy for ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc.)
Jim Geringer is fond of saying that he is an engineer by education, farmer by choice and Governor by accident. Geringer served two terms as Wyoming Governor, during which he focused on improving education, modernizing Wyoming’s economic base to include technology and changing how natural resource agencies among state, federal and local governments worked together. Geringer is a member of the Committee on America’s Climate Choices under the National Academies, served on the Mapping Sciences Committee under the National Research Council; Western Interstate Energy Board; Board member of NatureServe and co-chair of Policy Consensus Initiative. He is the current Chair of the Board of Trustees of Western Governors University. Geringer joined Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) in the summer of 2003, as Director of Policy and Public Sector Strategies, to work with senior elected and corporate officials on how to use geospatial technology for place-based decisions in business and government.
Robert M. Goldberg, Ph.D.
Center for Medicine in the Public Interest
Robert Goldberg is co-founder and vice president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. (CMPI) Along with Peter Pitts, Dr. Goldberg hosts the popular and controversial blog on the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare, www.drugwonks.com. Mr. Goldberg is a preeminent expert on health care policy in the United States and around the world.
John Harpole
Founder and CEO of Mercator Energy
Mr. John A. Harpole is founder and President of Mercator Energy LLC, a natural gas services, brokerage, and research company representing both producers and end-users. Mercator currently assists end-users and producers in 12 states, moving 5 BCF of gas per month. Mercator also conducts special research projects for client groups exploring the impact of industry trends on various regional markets. Mr. Harpole is a frequent speaker on natural gas pricing, transportation issues, and liquefied natural gas imports to such organizations as the Process Gas Consumers Conference in Washington, DC; CERI North American Natural Gas Conference in Calgary, Alberta; Colorado Oil & Gas Associations Annual Natural Gas Strategy Conference and the Wyoming Natural Gas Fair. Mr. Harpole is a board member of the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States and Chair of the Natural Gas Transportation and Markets Committee, board member of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association and Energy Outreach Colorado.
Kevin Jackson
Founder of BlackSphere.net
Kevin Jackson is a father of four sons, and an unlikely success story, given his background. He is a leader in the consulting industry in America, having some of the world’s largest companies as his clients. Interaction with prominent business leaders, as well as being a business leader himself has provided Jackson real world perspective to politics. “What you learn about America is people are a lot less interested in race than they are in character.” Jackson believes that empowerment comes when you know who you are and what you stand for.
Kate Obenshain
Vice President of Young America’s Foundation
A regular guest on Fox News and a popular campus speaker, Kate Obenshain is an articulate, fearless defender of conservative principles. She inspires audiences with her passionate, experienced insights, never hesitating to speak her mind, even when it contradicts the political establishment—as it often does. Kate champions her conservative convictions as vice president of Young America’s Foundation, the principal youth outreach organization of the Conservative Movement. Young America’s Foundation inspires emerging young leaders at the Reagan Ranch, Reagan Ranch Center, and student campuses across the country.
Amy Oliver
Host, the Amy Oliver Show; Founder, Mothers Against Debt
Amy Oliver Cooke is the director of the Colorado Transparency Project and founder of Mothers Against Debt (MAD) for the Independence Institute, Colorado’s free market, state-based think tank. She has been with II since 2004. Amy’s primary role is to investigate government spending at all levels and then explain how that spending affects family budgets. Her work on transparency earned her an appointment to the Long Term Fiscal Stability Commission from House Minority Leader Mike May. She is also the host of the award winning Amy Oliver Show heard on News Talk 1310 KFKA Monday through Friday from 9 to 11 am. In 2008, the Colorado Broadcasters Association recognized her as the best News Talk personality in a major market.
Dr. Hal Scherz, M.D.
Founder of Docs4PatientCare
Dr. Hal C. Scherz is a renowned Pediatric Urologist practicing in Atlanta Georgia. He is also serving as the President of Docs 4 Patient Care (D4PC). His training has taken him from New York to Texas to California at some of the most well regarded institutions in American Medicine. He is a full time practicing urologist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and is an Asst. Professor at Emory University. He has one of the few fellowship training programs in Pediatric Urology in the US and serves as a principal investigator on numerous studies in his field of expertise and a reviewer for several peer reviewed journals in Urology.
Grace-Marie Turner
Founder and President – Galen Institute
Grace-Marie Turner is president of the Galen Institute, a public policy research organization that she founded in 1995 to promote an informed debate over free-market ideas for health reform. She has been instrumental in developing and promoting ideas for reform that transfer power over health care decisions to doctors and patients. She speaks and writes extensively about incentives to promote a more competitive, patient-centered marketplace in the health sector.
Alan Wilson
Attorney General, South Carolina
Alan Wilson was elected South Carolina’s Fifty-First Attorney General on November 2, 2010 and took office on January 12, 2011. Prior to his election, Wilson spent his legal career as an Assistant Solicitor, an Assistant Attorney General, and as a civil litigator in private practice with Willoughby & Hoefer, P.A., in Columbia, SC. Growing up, Wilson’s parents, Joe and Roxanne, stressed the importance of service to all four of their sons. Each has achieved the rank of Eagle Scout and each presently serves our nation in uniform. Immediately following his graduation from Francis Marion University in 1996, Alan joined the South Carolina National Guard. And over the past fourteen years, Alan has been promoted to the rank of Major and received the Combat Action Badge for leading troops through enemy fire in Iraq.
Former Honorary Directors:
Kellyanne E. Conway
Founder and President, the polling company, inc./WomanTrend
Kellyanne Elizabeth Conway is Founder and President of the polling company™, inc./WomanTrend a privately-held, woman-owned corporation founded in 1995. The firm is headquartered in Washington, DC and maintains an office in New York City. Kellyanne is one of the most quoted and noted pollsters on the national scene, having provided commentary on over 1,200 television shows.
J. French Hill
Chairman & CEO of Delta Trust & Banking Corp.
J. French Hill is an investor and venture capitalist living in his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. He is founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Delta Trust & Banking Corp., a private banking company headquartered in Little Rock. Mr. Hill founded Delta Trust after a six-year career with Arkansas’ largest bank holding company, First Commercial Corp. First Commercial is now part of Regions Financial Corp.
Dan Mitchell
The Cato Institute
Dan currently serves as a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C. Mitchell’s research interests include tax reform, international tax competition, and the economics of fiscal policy. He is one of the nation’s leading experts on the flat tax, and has been the leading international voice in the fight to preserve tax competition, financial privacy, and fiscal sovereignty.
Christopher C. Horner
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Horner is author of Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America. As an attorney, Horner has represented CEI, scientists and Members of the U.S. Congress on matters of environmental policy in the federal courts, including in amicus briefs on several key cases heard by the Supreme Court. He is the author of two bestselling books on global warming policy.
Clifford May
President, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
He is the co-editor of The Afghanistan-Pakistan Theater: Militant Islam, Security and Stability. At the invitation of the Department of State, Mr. May recently traveled to Pakistan to advise U.S. and Pakistani government officials on their fight against terrorism.
Grover G. Norquist
President, Americans for Tax Reform
Mr. Norquist, a native of Massachusetts, has been one of Washington’s most effective issues management strategists for over two decades. He is president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a coalition of taxpayer groups, individuals and businesses opposed to higher taxes at the federal, state and local levels.
Post Office Box 883037, Steamboat Springs, Colorado 80488 * 970-871-9936 * 970-870-0571 fax
