Board

The ACLU of Colorado is led by an engaged Board of Directors, strategically positioned from around the state.

Arlette Baer

Residence: Denver
Occupation: ACLU Volunteer Membership Coordinator
ACLU Experience: Board Member 1980 - 1986
With over thirty years of in-office experience, Arlette Baer is the most senior member of the ACLU office, paid or volunteer. She has managed the membership database since the late 1970s. This mother of six (and grandmother of seven) traces her interest in civil liberties back to her 1971 arrest for protesting with the United Farm Workers in front of Argonaut Liquors. She has earned several awards over the years, most recently the ACLU’s Martha Radetsky Award in 2006.

Robert L. Connelly, Jr.

Residence: Denver
Occupation: Retired Attorney
ACLU Experience: Treasurer
Bob actively practiced law from 1974 until June 2007. During that period of time, he litigated civil matters in private practice in Atlanta, Georgia, and Denver and served as in-house counsel with US WEST and Qwest. He also spent two years as a staff attorney with the Atlanta Legal Aid Society. In addition to having litigated dozens of jury and bench trials as well as extensive state and federal appellate experience, he served in senior management roles for the law departments of US WEST and Qwest. He has also served on several non-profit boards, including those of the Denver Botanic Gardens, the Logan School, the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry, Judicial Institute and AnthioGen, Inc. Finally, he was an adjunct professor at Georgia State University Law School and Emory University Law School.

Robert Jones

Jeff Knetsch

Residence: Evergreen
Occupation: Attorney
ACLU Experience:  Board Member
A senior member of the Corporate & Business Department in the firm’s Denver office, Mr. Knetsch is a Shareholder in Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. His practice focuses primarily on mergers and acquisitions, public and private securities offerings, leveraged buy-outs, private equity fund formation, and corporate restructurings and workouts. He also counsels clients on legal issues affecting public companies and their compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other corporate governance regulations. Mr. Knetsch regularly counsels clients in transactions subject to public securities laws, including negotiated and hostile take-overs, tender offers, acquisitions, recapitalizations and going private transactions. Mr. Knetsch began his career in New York at the law firms of Sullivan & Cromwell and Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom.  From 2004 to 2008 he served on the board of directors of the Evergreen Park and Recreation District, serving as president in the last two years of his term. He has served on the board of directors of the Evergreen Recreation and Park Foundation since 2008.

Marissa Malouff

Occupation: DU Law Student
ACLU Experience: DU Law Chapter Representative

Marissa Malouff is a second-year law student at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, where she serves as the President of the student chapter of the ACLU. She currently works as a student attorney in the DU Law Civil Rights Clinic, working on prisoners’ rights cases. A Colorado native, she was born and raised in the blue-collar town of Pueblo, Colorado. She went to the University of Colorado at Boulder where she received a Bachelor of Science in Journalism. She has been involved in numerous causes and campaigns since she was 15 years old, when she volunteered to register voters. She is passionate about the ACLU’s mission, and hopes to defend civil liberties as an attorney. 

Will Miles, Phd

Basit Mustafa

Residence: Boulder

Occupation: Co-Founder/Chief Technical Officer of 3Perfect

ACLU Experience: Board Member

Basit Mustafa has combined his passion for protecting civil liberties and serving the non-profit community through advocacy work on the Boulder County ACLU Board since 2011. In addition to a vigorous commitment to carrying out the ACLU's mission he brings extensive non-profit, entrepreneurial, and private industry management experience from six years as executive treasurer for KGNU Community Radio (a 501(c)3 non-profit) as well as 10 years at IBM in various leadership roles. He currently is the co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of 3Perfect. When not engaged in these pursuits, Basit enjoys trail running including racing 100 mile ultramarathons.

Mari Newman

Residence: Denver
Occupation: Attorney
Previous ACLU Experience: Board Member, Cooperating Attorney.

Mari is a Partner at KILLMER, LANE & NEWMAN, LLP, where her practice emphasizes Civil Rights and Employment Law. Mari has been voted among the Top 100 Lawyers in Colorado and Top 25 Women Lawyers in Colorado. She has repeatedly been recognized as a Colorado Super Lawyer, is named in The Best Lawyers in America® and as one of Denver’s Best Lawyers® in the practice area of Labor and Employment Law, and was voted Law Week Colorado’s 2012 and 2011 “Barrister’s Best” Plaintiff’s Employment Lawyer. Mari was a co-recipient of the ACLU of Colorado’s 2010 Carle Whitehead Award, and the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association’s 2010 Access to Justice Award, honoring “perseverance, courage and character shown over and over in cases of extraordinary circumstances.” In 2009, she received the CTLA’s Case of the Year Award for leading her legal team in a case against the Colorado Department of Corrections and others for a prison guard’s rape of a female inmate. Ms. Newman was a co-recipient of the Southern Center for Human Rights’ 2007 Fredrick Douglas Human Rights Award for her representation of persons detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mari’s awards also include the Denver Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce’s 2012 Entrepreneurial Woman of the Year, the Denver Business Journal’s 2009 “Forty Under Forty,” the Denver Bar Foundation’s 2008 Richard Marden Davis Award, the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association’s 2008 Outstanding Young Trial Lawyer of the Year, and the Colorado Legal Initiatives Project’s 2007 Barrister of the Year.

Dan Recht

Residence: Denver

Occupation: Attorney

ACLU Experience: ACLU-CO Legal Panel Chair & previous Board Chair

Dan Recht is an experienced trial lawyer who has been successfully defending the criminally accused and Constitutional Rights in Colorado for over 25 years. Dan began his career as a Colorado State Public Defender and is a nationally recognized expert on criminal law, the First Amendment and Constitutional Law in general. Dan has tried over 100 jury trials in federal and state courts, including successfully defending assaults, sexual assaults, homicides, drug cases, white collar crimes, domestic violence, frauds, DUI’s, and disciplinary matters for professionals and students. Dan is chair of the ACLU of Colorado’s legal panel and a past chair of the ACLU of Colorado Board of Directors, as well as past president of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar, chair of the Second Judicial District Judicial Performance Commission and an otherwise active participant in the Colorado legal community.
 

Bruce Sattler

Residence: Denver
Occupation: Retired Attorney
ACLU Experience: Nominating Committee Chair 
Bruce is a former employment and trial lawyer, who spent twenty years with Holland & Hart and fifteen years with Faegre & Benson. He argued his first ACLU case, which involved a Chicano student who was expelled from Denver’s North High School, in 1970 and has been involved with the organization ever since, including receiving the Whitehead Award for outstanding work for civil liberties in 2000. He returned to the board after serving a nine-month stint as temporary executive director, during which he guided the organization through the search and hiring process of previous executive director Ray Drew. Bruce lives in Denver with his wife Martha.

Bob Solick

Residence: Berthoud
Occupation: Retired
ACLU Experience: Northern Colorado Chapter Representative
Bob joined the chapter board over two years ago, following retirement from the Army Research Institute, Ft. Leavenworth, KS.  His background is in research psychology, emphasizing leader training and influence methods.

Dan Sweetser

Kate Waller

Occupation: CU Law Student

ACLU Experience: CU Law Chapter Representative

Kate Waller is a first-year student at The University of Colorado School of Law. She graduated from Miami University of Ohio in 2008 with degrees in both Philosophy and Environmental Science. She has worked in both for-profit and non-profit organizations since then and has focused primarily on energy and environmental concern. She most recently moved from New Orleans, where she worked with the ACLU of Louisiana and with the Plessy and Ferguson Foundation. At the Plessy and Ferguson Foundation, her worked centered around charter school and educational rights issues. Kate is looking forward to expanding the CU student involvement with the ACLU and is excited to be the CU Representative to the Colorado Board.

Justin Weyerhaeuser

Residence: Denver
Occupation: Attorney
Previous ACLU Experience: Board Member
Justin currently works in the business litigation group at Husch Blackwell LLP, he previously worked for Jacobs Chase LLC. Prior to working for these firms he served as a volunteer attorney with the ACLU of Colorado. During his time there assisted with the ACLU’s efforts during the Democratic National Convention and, particularly, in its case against Weld County officials for an illegal search of Amalia Cerrillo’s tax preparation office. During and after law school he interned and volunteered with the ACLU of Michigan and Michigan Protection and Advocacy Service, where he worked primarily on legal issues affecting people with disabilities. Prior to becoming an attorney, he owned and ran a small business in New York City for several years.

Loring D. Wirbel

Residence: Monument (Colorado Springs)
Occupation: Editor
ACLU Experience: Colorado Springs Chapter Representative

Loring has been involved in intelligence analysis and civil liberties issues for more than 30 years, since working as a high school intern on studies of the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit for Michigan ACLU in the late 1970s.  He is co-chair of Colorado Springs ACLU, and serves on the boards of Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission and First Steps Spirituality Center.  He is the author of Star Wars: US Tools of Space Supremacy (Pluto Press, 2004) and co-author of Masters of War: Militarism and Blowback in the Bush Era (Routledge, 2003).  He is a winner of Sonoma State University's Project Censored awards for studies of the National Security Agency, and of Scripps-Howard National Writer/Editor Award.  He has worked in technology analysis with United Business Media of London, UK and Reed Business of Boston.  Loring is currently the editor of three high-technology blogs.  He lives in Monument with his family and too many wayward pets.

Gwen J. Young

Residence: Broomfield
Occupation: Partner in the Denver law firm of Wheeler Trigg O'Donnell
ACLU Experience: Board Vice Chair
Gwen is a partner of the Denver law firm of Wheeler Trigg O'Donnell. Her practice is focused on dealer-related commercial disputes for major domestic automobile manufacturers, as well as general civil and appellate being appointed to the Board in 2007, Gwen served as a cooperating attorney for the ACLU in its first amendment litigation on behalf of inmates and many publishers against the Colorado Department of Corrections regarding of magazines and other publications, achieving a very favorable settlement on behalf of our clients. Gwen has been a card-carrying member of the ACLU since the early 1970s and is a passionate, committed advocate for our causes.