Evening Moderator

Andrea Aragon

Andrea Aragon is the Executive Director of the Robert Hoag Rawlings Foundation with over 30 years of nonprofit leadership experience. She previously served as President/CEO of United Way of Pueblo County for 17 years and held roles at Colorado State University Pueblo and as the first executive director of the Pueblo Latino Chamber of Commerce.

Andrea has been a charter trustee of the El Pomar Foundation since 2016 and was recently named Vice Chair. She has served on numerous boards including Caring for Colorado (appointed by Governors Ritter and Hickenlooper), College Invest, Colorado Nonprofit Association, Philanthropy Colorado, Palmer Land Conservancy, and the Housing Authority for the City of Pueblo.

In 2023, Andrea was named Citizen of the Year by the Greater Pueblo Chamber of Commerce. She has received numerous honors including the Charles W. Crews Business Leader of the Year Award and CSU-Pueblo's President's Medallion for Distinguished Alumni Achievement.

Tahlia Bear

Tahlia Bear is an enrolled member of the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation and Navajo from Arizona. She is the Senior Indigenous Peoples Engagement Manager for Western Resources Advocates, an advocacy organization that fights climate change and its impacts in seven Western states. In this role, she is responsible for leading the organization’s outreach and partnership efforts with Tribes focused on advancing clean energy, conserving water, and protecting lands.

Tahlia has spent over a decade working in the nonprofit space for a variety of conservation and scientific organizations such as the National Wildlife Federation, the National Council for Science and the Environment, and the Geological Society of America. Currently, she serves as co-chair for the Indigenous Women’s Leadership Network, a catalyst program under the Water & Tribes Initiative supporting Indigenous women working on water and natural resource issues in the Colorado River Basin. She also serves on the Water Committee of her Tribe, the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation. Tahlia holds her bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a master’s degree from George Washington University.

Rebecca Jewett

Since 2014, Rebecca Jewett has served as President and CEO of Palmer Land Conservancy, leading a dedicated team in conserving southern Colorado's iconic landscapes—working farms and ranches, waterways, and outdoor recreation spaces.

Merging business acumen with nonprofit leadership, Rebecca brings over fifteen years of conservation experience to guide complex water and land initiatives. She co-founded BoardSpot, a tech startup providing SaaS tools for nonprofit boards.

Rebecca serves as founding chairman of Keep it Colorado and sits on the Land Trust Alliance's National Land Trust Leadership Council. She received the 2022 City of Colorado Springs Mayor's Young Leader Award and has been recognized as a Woman of Influence and Girl Scouts Woman of Distinction.

A 5th generation Coloradan, Rebecca holds an MRLS from the University of Denver and a BA in Political Science from Colorado College. She lives in Colorado Springs with her husband and two daughters.

Jan Martin

Jan Martin is a Colorado Springs native and has been active in the community for many years.  She served on City Council for eight years, has worked on multiple boards and commissions, and currently serves as President of the Garden of the Gods Foundation and Pikes Peak Waterways.  She’s part of the team that has turned its focus to Monument and Fountain Creeks, which run through the heart of Colorado Springs, and has created the COS Creek Plan to transform our waterways into economic and environmental assets for the city. 

Jan holds a bachelor’s degree in education from the University of Northern Colorado and an MBA in finance and information systems from Regis University.

Caitlin Ochs

Caitlin Ochs is a visual storyteller documenting climate change impacts through the lens of water and agriculture. As a National Geographic Explorer, she helps farmers tell stories of regenerative agriculture with visual narratives from the U.S. and top-producing agricultural regions worldwide, where food producers face pivotal moments of change. These stories highlight innovative ideas while investigating significant challenges and the critical stakes of achieving measurable, scalable progress.

Her first National Geographic project investigated southwestern farmers on the front lines of climate change, documenting their experiences with growing unpredictability in water access and deepening impacts depleting the Colorado River.

A member of the Society of Environmental Journalists and 2022 Metcalf Science Communication Fellow, Ochs is dedicated to capturing powerful visuals connecting climate change to everyday life and grounding scientific research and environmental issues in human stories. As a storyteller, she believes it is our responsibility to help global communities make sense of changes happening around us.