For the first time in its history, the Joint Management Committee of the Colorado Bar Association and the Denver Bar Association voted to appoint a female executive director and CEO. Amy Larson assumed the role this year after serving more than 14 years with the organizations.
Previously, Larson served both the CBA and DBA as deputy executive director and COO before becoming the interim executive director. She has more than 25 years of experience serving in corporate, association and leadership roles and has experience leading organizations.
Larson’s prior work included acting as the public affairs director for the Storage Technology Corporation, the executive director for the American Electronics Association, manager of government affairs at the Institute of Certified Financial Planners and a public relations and marketing professional for PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Larson sat down to speak with Law Week about the current state of affairs at the CBA/DBA and about her recent step into this position.
LAW WEEK: How does it feel being the first female CBA DBA executive director?
LARSON: It is a humble honor. We have a firm foundation and look forward to continuing to execute within our strategic plan and encourage the good work that the bar has done and will continue to do.
LAW WEEK: You’ve mentioned some pretty extensive involvement with attorneys in the past, and said that you started working with attorneys when you were 16, what led to that and what has kept your interest in law?
LARSON: The experience when I was 16 was in California. I had the opportunity to attend Girls State, and during that time, we had the opportunity to have a job, and I was enthralled to have the position with a county court judge.
I thought it was just fantastic, I thought, “O.K., well this is kind of fun, maybe I’ll go into court administration or law school.”
Then my first job out of high school was Bates stamping in the litigation department of a very large law firm in Southern California. This is back in 1986, so [I] really got a sense of how things work from the most entry level position. But it was fascinating to me.
All along the course of my career I looked at attending law school, took law classes, I worked in the city attorney’s office and I was an intern at the White House.
I was involved in the presidential appointment for the judiciary, and then I worked at Pricewaterhouse [Coopers] in their dispute analysis and corporate recovery group – all of our clients were attorneys and law firms.
Then, for a brief time, I worked at Brownstein [Hyatt Farber Schreck] in their public policy department, and of course working in the legislative lobbying arena, and even in my private association we were always working with and alongside attorneys.
And just valuing their intellect, their training, how the body of law interacts with association work – my expertise is in intergovernmental management and obviously interassociation work, in terms of how the governmental aspects cross over into the business and the association world and nonprofit space.
So, all of that really fuels my mind and seeing how it all works together is something that continues to be a passion for me. In this position now, how does the bar function well within the legal space but also what do we look like to our community? How do we engage with other aspects of business life here in Colorado?
LAW WEEK: The bar’s strategic plan is currently underway – how that will affect the CBA’s future work?
LARSON: We have reauthorized the plan for another three years. We’re right in the middle of enacting it, and any good strategic plan is as good as the efforts that everyone is putting into it and our members and our staff are working so diligently. It’s so exciting seeing it coming to fruition in the terms of diversity and inclusivity, our new and young lawyers, greater Colorado.
LAW WEEK: How do the young lawyers factor into your plan?
LARSON: We’ve always had new and young lawyers, and with this recent discussion, it’s how do we freshly engage the new lawyers coming through. They are so energetic and diligent; they know what they need from their profession and from their bar association and they are integrated within our governance structure, with DBA, the board of trustees, the CBA, our council, the board of governors.
Each bar has their own young lawyers division, and they continue to evolve with their dynamic programming in terms of mentoring and volunteering, engagement with the courts, CLE, speaking opportunities, networking, the list just continues. I have a great sense of the pulse of what’s happening within the profession. They had a joint task force as well, focusing on their key deliverables.
LAW WEEK: In addition to that, can you tell me more about the work done with greater Colorado
LARSON: That task force is underway – they just started their work with two meetings; there are seven more to go. They’re a council of nine and they are meeting around the state to discuss, again, we’ve always been greater Colorado but what does that look like now, and how are we engaging? How do we use the remote technology that we have to better engage? How do we look at hosting meetings and [education] in other parts of the state? How do we continue to provide resources to members outside of the metro area?
We’ll have a better sense of the completion of their work at the end of the year. We’re right in the middle of it.
LAW WEEK: Communication and engagement are two prime goals of both boards. How are you looking at new ways of engaging potential and current members?
LARSON: There are very specific things we have underway just in the tech space alone. We have a new platform with Higher Logic, and it’s establishing communities within the organization. It’s the next stage of the listserv.
This is a very dynamic connection with the members. They can post questions, they can post documents. It’s a very different way of engaging. We have rolled that out in different phases to the different sections, and now we are rolling them out within the bars, like the local bars have a community page, and the members are getting used to that technology.
We are constantly improving the website to be more realtime. We have launched a new email platform called Informs, and that allows a series of meaningful communications to go out on a variety of topics to very specific subsets of the membership.
So you have the analytics with that, but you have the ability to not have to send everything to everybody all the time. The members can select what types of information they want to receive from which areas.
We’re getting used to the new technologies. We’ve had them for several months, but again it’s really understanding how that all flows in the practice of our work and making certain we’re using all the aspects of these tools effectively.
We’ve done more on social media also. About a year and a half ago, we hired a social media coordinator, and we’re making certain that our presence is consistent across the platforms, it’s meaningful and that members have access to that.
We’re also beginning to post and produce more podcasts … And again, everything we’re doing in this space is layered with something else. It’s layered with a program, it’s also weaving in the new and young attorneys, it’s weaving in our governance. We’re moving away from isolated events or opportunities and looking at how this interacts with the organization cross-functionally.
LAW WEEK: Are there any programs that you’re personally excited about?
LARSON: All of them. I’m just so fascinated with the programs that have been hallmarks, and then to see how they progress and the excellence delivered, serves as a launching pad for other new opportunities.
For example, access to justice, to see how our work there has led to a very meaningful partnership with the federal courts in organizing a federal pro se and that started off as a two-year pilot, then the courts decided to make that a permanent program.
That’s been re-authorized for another four years, and the staff work that went into that, the leadership that went into that, the partnership that went into that, the faith and mutual respect that continues to nurture this relationship is just phenomenal.
Something that I say all the time is that everything is preparation for something else. You can very much see that, and the members lead the way. From the staff’s perspective, we enter this work with service.
We have a heart for service, and it’s our professional job to do well by the members and deliver excellence.
LAW WEEK: Can you speak a little about the programs and ways in which the CBA and DBA are looking to increase, work on or expand?
LARSON: We have four pillars. The first one is building a leadership pipeline; the second is messaging and recording and outreach.How are we communicating what we’re doing – and that’s where our excellent communications team comes in.
We’re doing all these great things, but I think any organization faces that juggernaut of how do folks know what we’re doing? How do you have that clarity in the message?
And then the third component is implementing tools to succeed. That’s where the leadership job descriptions come in. You can’t really volunteer well unless you know what you’re volunteering for and the expectations.
And then the fourth one is accountability, transparency, measuring the reporting. The demographics, do we know who the members are, and are we connecting?
So again, all of that folds in, all of this good touches into every department here – whether it’s communications, even IT … so there’s dynamic conversation with them.
Our sections and committees, and there are 29 of them, and they are so much a heartbeat of what we do. About two-thirds are at least a member of a section. Many, and most, are multiple members of multiple sections.
And of course that helps them with their practice, the best practices, trends, and of course their colleagues in their particular space.
LAW WEEK: I would like to expand on some things you mentioned earlier. Could you go into more detail about how the communication leadership pipeline works?
LARSON: A lot of it is sharing with folks that there is absolutely a place for you to be here at the bar.
Leadership takes on so many different opportunities. We had a formal leadership program called Cobalt, and that information is online, it’s quite interesting — and to see the members that have participated in that program over the years, and where they are right now in their leadership capacity. In any big initiative there’s always several Cobalt grads around the table. There are micro-volunteer opportunities and micro-leadership opportunities as well.
The main thing is invitation. And then that comes next with knowledge. Do you know what’s available as a leader? And then the how – how do I engage and with whom?
So much of that, and what I’ve seen over the years, is watching mentorship whether informal or formal, in some place, and half of it is just connecting. It’s reaching out saying, ‘hey, do you want to join a program, or come as my guest,’ or, it’s simply picking up the phone or email and just reaching out.
And again, expanding on the knowledge to let people know what’s available, what suits them. Everyone’s going to have a different passion, a different arc of time, and that changes over the years, especially the members that have been with us for 40 or 50 years.
With each of these local bar visits we’re presenting lapel pins for the members, for individuals who have been members for 50 years, who have been practitioners for 50 years, and they’re still engaged in their art.
I really enjoy hearing their stories of why they got involved or how they got involved, what their experiences have been.
LAW WEEK: Immigration has been a hot button issue recently. Has it become a big focus for the CBA or have there been any requests for opportunities or resources from different bar associations and CBA members ?
LARSON: We have our immigration section, and the CBA has a very hearty legislative program. And we work with our partnered organizations on a variety of things.
Depending on the nature of the issues at hand, we usually are looking at the law, weighing in on the law — whether it’s legislatively, programmatically, we’re always in conversations with the courts, good conversations there and good conversations with our diversity bars, and with our other partnered organizations.
This just has continual conversation, and ebb and flow depending on any particular issue at hand, so immigration has been one of those that has ebbed and flowed.
LAW WEEK: Do you see a parallel between those ebbs and flows and what goes on in the world?
LARSON: This is another thing that has impressed me about the bar. Because the members, who’ve been so engaged over time, and there is this bedrock of intellectual capacity, and what comes with that is perspective.
And so, we, as an organization, both bars have just developed this stability and a thoughtful process for which we tackle issues. I think having that longevity, having that perspective, but we would be nowhere without our members that invest in the time to come around the table, to talk with the other organizations that have different areas of focus come around the table.
And that’s one thing I love about Colorado. Being a California native, one thing I noticed here in Colorado is this willingness to solve problems in a collaborative way. And that willingness to delve into tougher topics and to see how we can solve a problem.
We’ve seen this over time in other areas of the law too, through a lot of work with the uniform laws, and we’re always tweaking to make it applicable to Colorado, because our body of law has developed over time and so a lot of these national ideas or international ideas are wonderful, but to have them be relevant they need to fit here. And so in many areas we’ll have fresh thoughts because of that.
That’s just one of the stunning aspects of the Colorado Bar and the Denver Bar —just to see that thought process, and again that devotion of intellect, produces outcomes that are refreshingly different and that work. And then we go back and refine.
Nothing stays the same, and I appreciate that about our members too, the willingness to relook at an issue. It’s the same way we look at ourselves. This has worked great but how do we refresh, and how do we strengthen ourselves in that process too.
[For the DBA it’s] very similar. We have a diversity statement, and it’s the same statement by both bars. And again, how do you better engage with programming? Is it meeting the professional development, the pro bono?
One place to look for the Denver Bar is the Metro Volunteer Lawyers. That is the hallmark program of the Denver Bar.
They do a lot of other things as well, but this is in partner[ship] with Colorado Legal Services and it started about 40 years ago.
It’s a Thursday night bar and there were a few attorneys that said, hey, how can we use our legal knowledge in a pro bono way to make a difference? So there’s partnerships around the greater metro area.
That’s a place to look to for our investment and time.
— Avery Martinez