For Yvette Cook, there was no choice growing up but to serve her community. She says her civic-minded parents encouraged her to follow a path of altruism. Now Cook (BA ’82, MA ’85) heads up Usher’s New Look (UNL), an Atlanta-based nonprofit started by the multiplatinum-selling performer at the age […]

Brian Vicente (JD ’04) has been fighting the marijuana fight for more than a decade, most significantly as co-director and one of two primary authors of the 2012 measure that made Colorado the first state in the country to legalize recreational marijuana. These days Vicente and his 50-person firm, Vicente […]

Two years ago, Nicole Mattson (BSBA ’03, business; MBA ’12) and her husband, Scott, opened Nocturne, an upscale jazz club in Denver’s up-and-coming RiNo (River North) neighborhood. A hotspot for local jazz artists and aficionados — including faculty and students from the Lamont School of Music —t he club has […]

Hillary Frances (MA ’09, international and intercultural communications) is instructional dean of adult education and the Language Learning Center at Emily Griffith Technical College, where she helps prepare nontraditional students — including refugees and immigrants — for the workforce. The school’s bridge classes are designed to help adults who worked […]

A Denver native and East High School graduate who went to Princeton to play basketball, CJ Chapman (JD ’06) returned to his hometown after college to pursue a law degree at DU. He is now a partner and real estate lawyer at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, where he has negotiated […]

Candi CdeBaca (BS ’09, sociology; MSW ’09, social work) is co-founder and executive director of Project VOYCE, a nonprofit that mobilizes and trains Denver youth to work on problems in their schools and communities. Her goal is to prepare kids from Denver’s poorer neighborhoods to claim their seat at the […]

Rodney Billups never expected his career to turn out the way it did. He dreamed about playing professional basketball. He wanted to be a business owner. Retire early. Follow in the footsteps of his brother Chauncey Billups — the former NBA star and arguably the best player to ever come […]

He has become a familiar sight around campus — a lanky guy in sunglasses and cap who waits until dark, rides his giant tricycle up to a building, busts out a projector and starts blasting colorful, eye-catching 3-D images onto the existing architecture. Travis Powell, 23, a student in DU’s […]

Vice President Joe Biden delivered the keynote address at the 19th annual Korbel Dinner on Sept. 15. The yearly event benefits programs, scholarships and centers at the University’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies and honors individuals whose leadership and commitment embody the goals established by school founder Josef Korbel. […]

For most Coloradans, autumn Sundays are synonymous with one thing — Denver Broncos football. DU alumnus Conor McGahey (BA ’07), who this year became the public-address announcer at Broncos home games, has a unique perspective on the blue-and-orange mania that overtakes Denver each weekend. In the booth for all of […]

From engineering to psychology, biology to social work, mathematics to law, University of Denver faculty members bring in millions of dollars each year to conduct research on behalf of federal, state and local governments, as well as corporations and foundations. The money is a boon not just to faculty members, […]

Kim Gorgens, a clinical associate professor in DU’s Graduate School of Professional Psychology, has been making headlines for years for her research on traumatic brain injury (TBI). Her 2010 TEDxDU talk on youth sports concussions went viral, and she was involved in drafting and supporting the 2011 Jake Snakenberg Youth […]

Every winter since 2002, a group of DU students has made a trip to Dharamsala, a city in India’s Himalayan region that is home to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile. International Service Learning (ISL) Dharamsala, one of DU’s longest-running international programs, engages undergraduate and graduate students […]

Everything he needed to know about opening a brewery, Wyatt Patterson learned in business school. That’s because Patterson, like many graduate students at DU’s Daniels College of Business, entered his MBA program with a specific business idea in mind. For Patterson, that idea was Storm Peak Brewing Co., which he […]

Regan Linton, who received a master’s degree from DU’s Graduate School of Social Work in 2010, made theater history this fall when she became the first person in a wheelchair to be named artistic director of a major U.S. theater company. And it makes perfect sense that the company in […]