Jamie Van Leeuwen currently serves as the Director of Public-Private Partnerships with the Emerson Collective focused on building and leveraging relationships across sectors that impact social justice issues specific to education, conservation, immigration, health care, and youth development. Prior to this role Jamie served both Mayor and Governor John Hickenlooper for 14 years as a public sector leader in Colorado. Through his work in local and State politics he has engaged collectively across sectors to generate over $300 million in new resources for the public good. He is also the CEO & Founder of the Global Livingston Institute (GLI), a non-governmental organization in East Africa designed to engage students and community leaders to Listen. Think. Act. by developing innovative solutions to poverty. He is a Senior Research Fellow with the University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs and became a Fulbright Scholar in 2013 and a Woodrow Wilson International Fellow in 2017.
Jamie completed his PhD in Public Policy at the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado Denver with an emphasis on affordable housing and homelessness. He has a Master’s degree in International Public Health and a Master’s degree in Sociology from Tulane University. Jamie was selected in 2005 as an inaugural Livingston Fellow by the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Board to cultivate his leadership in the non-profit community in Colorado and in 2006 was named one of “Forty Under Forty” by the Denver Business Journal. In 2011 he was featured in the Power Issue of Out Front magazine as a leader in Lesbian & Gay community and in 2017, CoBiz Magazine named him as one of the 25 Most Powerful People in Colorado.
He is the recipient of the 2018 Denver Center for International Studies Community Ambassador Award, the 2017 Urban Peak Maverick Thinker Award, the 2014 Creighton University Alumnae Merit Award, the 2010 Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation Alumnus of the Year, and the 2009 “Judy Kaufman Civic Entrepreneurship Award” from the Denver Foundation.
Jamie has extensive international experience with travel to over 115 countries. He is an avid runner and has participated in over a dozen competitive races including a two-time finisher of the New York City Marathon and the Boulder Half Iron Man.
Current role