Immigrant Pathways Colorado Nonprofit in Littleton CO

BOARD OFFICERS

Susan Thornton, founder and Co-Chair of IPC

She is a native of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

She earned a Bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and a Master’s degree in Journalism from UCLA, then worked as a member of the Los Angeles News Bureau at U.S. News & World Report. Following her move to Colorado, Susan was a consulting writer for numerous news magazines, and for eight years was an opinion columnist for The Denver Post.

Susan is a strong believer in preventing social and other problems; for 10 years she held a clinical faculty appointment in Preventive Medicine at UC Health Sciences Center, where she wrote/edited numerous books and training videos before running successfully for the Littleton City Council. She served 16 years on the Council, eight of those years as Mayor of Littleton, where she co-founded the Metro Mayors Caucus, sat on the Board of the Colorado Municipal League, and led communities across the U.S. caught up in Superfund litigation.

Susan was a founder of the Littleton Leadership Academy and today is the founder and chair of the South Metro Community Foundation. She is a consulting writer for the Special District Association of Colorado and other organizations.

She and her husband have extensive international travel to far-flung countries, such as Borneo, where they erected solar panels to provide electricity at a remote orangutan research station. They have a grown son who is married to an immigrant from Bulgaria, who Susan says has greatly enriched their lives, and one lovely granddaughter.

Susan enjoys time with her granddaughter, playing the Great Highland Bagpipes, taking tai chi and ballroom dancing lessons, visiting with friends, reading and community-organizing.

Deborah “Vera” Ryan, Treasurer of IPC

She is a retired Registered Nurse. Prior to retirement, she was an instructor at Arapahoe Community College teaching CNA certification courses, and teaching the “Language of Medicine” to Japanese nursing students at Spring International Language Center. Most of her nursing career primarily involved cardiology, cardiovascular research and quality assurance.

Born and raised in Rockford, IL, Vera earned not only a degree in nursing, but dual Master’s degrees in Exercise Physiology and Cardiac Rehabilitation. She completed her Master’s thesis at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm Sweden.

Vera is married and has two daughters and three grandchildren. Her extensive interests include international travel, entertaining, organic gardening, making her own food, canning, fly fishing, camping, snowshoeing, and spending time with her family, including grandchildren. She also volunteers for a woman’s shelter.

Connie Shoemaker, Secretary of IPC

She is co-founder and director emerita of Spring International Language Center.

Connie grew up in a Mexican/Italian neighborhood in West Denver where her love of writing began on the staff of the West High newspaper. On scholarship to Colorado State University, she continued dating her high school sweetheart and future husband, Floyd, who joined her to edit the Rocky Mountain Collegian newspaper in their senior year.

Connie continued to work as a part-time reporter and columnist in Missouri and Michigan as her husband pursued a PhD in Mass Communication and Social Change. With a new degree and three children in tow, the family made a life-changing decision to move to Cairo, Egypt, for four years, where Floyd initiated an M.A. in Mass Communication and Social Change at American University. Connie combined raising the family with her love of writing: Associated Press special reporter, author of a book of poetry, and writing instructor at the University.

Back in Colorado, Connie began writing a book about Egyptian women that was sponsored by a grant from the Rocky Mountain Women’s Institute and was instrumental in establishing Bridge International Language Center. In 1979. she and three colleagues founded Spring Institute for International Studies. A few years later, the founders divided Spring into two separate entities, with the focus of Spring International Language Center (SILC) on intensive English for international students. They later established additional Centers on the Denver Auraria campus and at the University of Arkansas- Fayetteville. Marketing trips for SILC and consulting trips for the U.S. State Department have taken Connie to the Middle East, Tunisia, Europe and Latin America.

An award-winning author of numerous books, she has also facilitated classes on Telling and Writing Your Life Stories for Denver University’s Osher Life Long Learning Institute. Connie and her husband feel blessed to have six grandchildren, including three grandsons who live in Cyprus.

Diane Huling, Grants Manager and Database Administrator for IPC

She is a native of Denver whose father emigrated from the Ukraine at the age of two.

Diane earned a Bachelor’s degree in Economics with a minor in Philosophy from the University of Denver. She worked for former Denver D.A. Dale Tooley as a Neighborhood Watch coordinator, responsible for organizing one-quarter of Denver and bringing citizens and police together to help lower crime rates. She also worked in information technology for the State Department of Natural Resources for over 10 years, many of them when Ken Salazar was Executive Director.

She retired as the Director of Information Technology at the Colorado History Museum, where she was responsible for leading the project that gave the Museum a new, then-current computer network to replace the unconnected machines that existed when she arrived.

In addition to managing IPC’s grants, Diane enjoys spending time with friends and her daughter and two grandchildren, and participating in aquatics, gym and tai chi activities, reading, gardening and crafting.

BOARD MEMBERS

Tiffany Andrews works in higher education, assisting New American students with their educational and employment goals. She previously worked in hospitality and healthcare, and enjoyed meeting people from around the world as she did so.

Her interests include taking long walks, reading about anything and everything and spending time with her family.

Julia Guzman, a native Spanish-speaker, is an immigration attorney in solo practice at Guzman Immigration, where she focuses primarily on family-based immigration cases, humanitarian visas, DACA, and citizenship. She also sits on the Executive Committee of the American Immigration Lawyers Association of Colorado and on the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Global Committee of the YMCA of Metro Denver.

The child of Nicaraguan immigrants, Julia grew up in Houston, TX, 10 minutes from the Johnson Space Center. She graduated from the University of Texas-Austin (Plan II/ French major, Spanish minor) and earned her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center.

Julia married her childhood sweetheart and has two children. In her spare time, Julia’s interests are singing, photography, dancing, nature hikes and participates with her husband in a weekly podcast about horror movies called Castle of Horror.

Mike Harrison says he is “doubly retired,” having worked for 27 years with John’s Manville Corporation before retiring in January of 2000 from his position as Vice President and General Manager. He then completed his seminary studies and served as Associate Pastor of Bethany Evangelical Free Church for 12 years, stepping out of that responsibility in 2017. He still serves in leadership at Bethany.

Mike spent the first 10 years of his life in Bismarck , North Dakota. His family then moved to Billings, Montana, where he graduated from High School. He then moved to Colorado to attend college. In 1973, Mike graduated from CU Boulder with a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. In 1982, he received an MBA from the University of Denver, and in 2003, he earned a Master of Arts in Global Leadership from Fuller Seminary.Emer

As a Missions leader at his church, Mike has traveled extensively, visiting and engaging with churches and missionaries in 10 countries. He has led 14 short-term mission trips ranging from 10 days to 3 weeks and is very involved with the Hispanic culture in Colorado through both the North Littleton Promise ministry as well as a Spanish-speaking sister church, Vida Nueva Para Denver, that meets at Bethany.

Mike and his wife have two married daughters and four grandchildren, all living in the Denver area. Mike says that his woodworking interests have given way to “grandparenting,” serving in church leadership, and sitting on five non-profit boards that serve the poor, marginalized, and immigrant communities in the area.

Courtney Loehfelm is the Associate Vice President of Institutional Advancement and Executive Director for the Arapahoe Community College Foundation. Prior to that, she was a real estate agent and office manager in Buffalo, NY.

Born and raised in a suburb (Orchard Park) outside of Buffalo, Courtney earned an
Associate’s Degree from Eric Community College, followed by a Bachelor’s Degree in Speech Language Pathology from Buffalo State College.

Courtney enjoys working with international students at ACC. She and her husband share their home with a son, a daughter and two dogs. She enjoys live music, kids’ sports, movies, working out, and the Buffalo Bills.

Gerre Shenkin was born in Denver and has lived here most of her life. She says she first saw Denver as a small city with few immigrants, but she learned from her grandparents — who escaped from Germany and Russia — the wonder of being able to immigrate to America. She holds Master’s degrees in Reading English and in English as a Second Language.

Gerre travels extensively to Europe, and she and her late husband sailed by themselves to many parts of the world, including Greece, Tonga and islands in the Caribbean. For about 10 years, she lived in Mexico for three months a year.

Gerre has three daughters, 15 grandchildren and 50 great-grandchildren! Her daughters live in Durango, CO, Vancouver, Canada, and Israel. She makes frequent trips to see them.

Gerre taught English as a Second Language at Denver University and Spring International Language Center for a number of years. When she retired, she continued teaching in many Immigrant programs. She loves being around people from other countries (one Japanese student lived with her family for three years) and is a life-long learner, taking adult classes on many subjects.

Maria-Lucy Moncada-Arcila, a native of Colombia, is a Banking Officer at Alpine Bank.

A Social Worker with a degree in Family and Couples Care in Special Situations, she also has experience with Foster Parent planning. Lucy works to help the community through Alpine Bank and the Rotary Club of Roaring Fork, Glenwood Springs, where she has been secretary and president, and where she has coordinated scholarships for young people.

In addition to serving on the Board of Immigrant Pathways Colorado, Lucy serves on eight other community boards.

A divorcee, Ludy is proud of her son, Jesse Daniel Monsalve Moncada, who graduated at the Colorado Mountain College with degrees in Theater Program, Business Administration and New Media Production. Jesse lives in New York City and works at The New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts.

Marissa Keplinger is a native of the Philippines. She earned a degree in English from Mindanao State University. After college, she moved to the Middle East and worked as a flight attendant for about a decade. Marissa, her husband, and their two sons lived in Africa, South America, and Canada before settling in Colorado.

Marissa enjoys traveling and dancing, mountain climbing, and hiking with family and friends.

Kimberly Sergeant Graham, is a social worker and therapist at Jefferson Center, a community mental health agency. Originally from Northern Virginia, she has called Colorado home for over 25 years. Kim began her career as a software consultant before transitioning to social services in 2011.

Her passion for community work led her to the City of Littleton’s Immigrant Resources Center, where she initially volunteered before taking on a formal role. There, she wrote grants, trained volunteers, and supported clients navigating the U.S. citizenship process. This experience deepened her understanding of the complexities of government systems and policies, ultimately inspiring her to pursue a Master of Social Work at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Kim has a lifelong love of learning and also holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia and an M.B.A. from Thunderbird School of Global Management. She lives in Littleton with her husband, Ted, and their two nearly grown children, DJ and Lena.

Beyond her professional work, Kim serves on the Littleton Town Hall Arts Center Capital Campaign Committee and the Board of Directors for Immigrant Pathways Colorado. In her free time, she enjoys skiing, aerial dance, and attending live theater.

Our Board