Meet the Doers of JJK Places

My professional background includes three decades of working in a variety of functions within real estate development, finance, economic development, urban planning, affordable housing, community development, and asset acquisition underwriting. During my career I have been involved in over $5.1 billion worth of real estate investment transactions, consulting assignments, and development projects in nearly every property type and large urban location across the country.

During the first half of my career, I was immersed in the for-profit sector, where I concentrated primarily in the finance and project management aspects of real estate development, investment acquisitions, due diligence, evaluating capital structures, and negotiating.

For the latter half of my career, during the last 15+ years, I have worked primarily in socially conscious real estate—which includes affordable housing, transit oriented development (TOD), nonprofit owned and occupied commercial space, and community properties. I expanded my professional expertise working within both the nonprofit sector and municipal government. The commonality of all these experiences was the goal of creating “social good” through intentional property development, urban planning, and community development. Such efforts have included work in city planning and site design, community engagement, land use policy planning, entitlements and zoning efforts, economic development, and attempting to address civic issues related to social equity, food and health justice, and community benefits for marginalized urban neighborhoods.

People always used to ask me what benefit a history degree is in the business world. I would respond back that it is very relevant to business: it teaches one how to do research, write coherently, and especially think critically about new issues, challenges, and unforeseen events. These are all capabilities that have served me well throughout my three decade long business and real estate career.

If we live correctly, I believe life can teach us far more than formal education ever can. In spite of holding three master’s degrees, I still value life experience, and a person who has learned valuable lessons from their unique life journey.

My parents held strongly in the notion that life experiences were one of the best teachers a person could have. This formed their innate belief that travel was every bit as important for a child’s education as school was. We therefore, from a young impressionable age, were exposed to a wide diversity of people, regions, cities, cultures, and local histories. It set in motion the start of a life-long curiosity and desire to satisfy my inquisitive nature through continuous learning. It also instilled an acceptance and appreciation for people from different backgrounds, foreign lands, and ethnicities. These personal character traits have served me well over the years, especially during the last two decades of work where I had one foot in the private sector and the other in a combination of the public, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors.

It could be said the work “Places” resonates so strongly with me because of my passion, started early in life, of visiting unique places. As an adult, I don’t just visit new places, but rather I seek to study them in order to understand how places and their built-environments impact people and surrounding communities. It is today one of the elements of real estate that interests me most: how to design and sustain spaces and places so that they can positively impact people’s well-being, promote more human interaction, and lead to greater opportunities. This in turn is I believe the spaces we regularly occupy should not just house and office us, but should be healthy and joyful places to occupy.

And that is the fundamental raison d’etre for why JJK Places was created.

On a less serious note, I also dream about having more free time to paint and write—my two Zen activities, whenever I get to indulge in them! Give me a paint brush, canvas, and easel—or a pen and notebook, and a quiet space—and I am as content as a bird flying through the sky!

In my 20 years residing in Denver, I have lived a half block off of Colfax Avenue in the Capitol Hill and City Park neighborhoods. It is a diverse racial and socio-economic area of Denver that has seen tremendous change. I have explored this Colfax corridor up close by foot, bike, scooter, and the number 15 bus line. It has given me firsthand experience with the benefits and shortfalls of economic rejuvenation of an urban area.

I have over 25 years of experience managing and leading planning projects for neighborhoods, downtowns, and business/retail corridors across the United States, all with the major goal of creating more equitable and healthier neighborhoods. I have led both traditional and targeted community outreach processes, which often include one-on-one stakeholder interviews, resident focus groups, and discussions with elected officials. I also have previously worked in some of Colorado’s most respected urban design, economic development, and transportation planning consulting firms, including P.U.M.A., Civitas, MIG, and Charlier Associates.

Lastly, I have done project management and site design work for various residential development projects during my past career – including involvement with a sizable TOD development site – as well as having been involved in new business origination work.

I am an AICP certified planner. I earned my master’s degree in Urban & Regional Planning (MURP) from the University of Colorado Denver after 10 years working as a professional landscape architect and transportation planner. As part of this program, I also participated in a study abroad in Rome with a focus on Urban Design and Architectural History. This education supplemented my prior undergraduate degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Arizona.

I was born in Reno, Nevada with a modest upbringing by very young parents who spent their entire careers as a firefighter and an administrative assistant. I was taught to work hard from a young age, starting my own lawn mowing and snow shoveling businesses which enabled me to purchase my first BMX bike, my sweet 1980’s acid washed jeans, and eventually my own car. My father’s mom, otherwise known as GG-MA, was an authentic old west pioneer. She was born in 1910 in the gold mining town of Bodie, CA after her Irish parents immigrated to America during the gold rush of the late 1800s. In addition, one of her cousins was a member of the ill-fated Donner Party (google it if you are not familiar!). I spent many summers with her, in her bright orange 1975 Ford Bronco, along with my parents 4-wheeling the backroads of Nevada and the eastern Sierra Nevada’s in California, while visiting ruins of old mining towns and exploring remote parts of the west that most people will never see. I have recently been able to bike ride some of these same roads which has been quite a thrill!

GG-MA managed to travel the world later in life, having been a single mother of two on an elementary school teacher’s salary. She planted the travel and exploration seed in me at an early age that I still have to this day. In addition to all the fun and educational travel, she taught me the importance of working hard in school and saving money, which in turn has allowed me to explore our amazing world.

The major reason I joined JJK is to help provide “income appropriate” housing to those in less fortunate economic circumstances than me. No matter how hard many people work, today they are still unable to afford a modest home to live in. JJK Place’s founder sums it up perfectly with the company’s Vision Statement that says we are seeking to “eliminate barriers to possibilities.”

Exploring the world on any type of bicycle – road, mountain, gravel, cruiser, fixie…except a unicycle. And camping – which typically includes bringing one or two bicycles along!

A world free of prejudice where everyone is provided a good education, housing, healthy food, clean water, and affordable health care.

And being outdoors on my bike!

My past communications strategies and marketing campaigns have been instrumental in growing small nonprofit organizations, helping them realize unprecedented success and expansion.  I also am apt at fundraising, grant writing, event planning, and even writing Seussian-style poetry (you’ll need to ask me about the poetry thing!)

I was born and raised in Michigan, and spent the first six years of my professional career as an on-air radio personality in Marquette, Flint, Lansing, and Detroit. Being on radio taught me how to deal with a diversity of individuals, but also taught me how to get a message across to a wide spectrum of people and populations. 

I once owned my own marketing and communications firm which specialized in fast-track marketing for start-up companies. Several years later I served as Director of Marketing and Communications at Tennyson Center for Children for 10 years. Following that I was the Vice-President of Marketing & Development at Firefly Autism, Colorado’s leading treatment center for children and families living with autism spectrum disorder.  Currently I serve as Director of Development and Communications at Western States Cancer Research (formerly Colorado Cancer Research Program)

I was a recent national finalist for the honor of Nonprofit Marketing Professional of the Year from the American Marketing Association. Additionally, I have received numerous other regional accolades for my innovative marketing work.

I received my Bachelor Degree in Graphic Design/Communications from Northern Michigan University and attended graduate school at Michigan State University.

I like to believe that my true education started the day I walked out of college with my degree.  The world and life ever since have been my best educators.  Incrementally I perhaps learned the most in the shortest period of time being a radio personality directly out of college. It’s a fast-paced job, requiring quick thinking on one’s feet, a positive cheerful attitude at all times, and a lot of stress and pressures to always be delivering 100 percent to my clients, the public listeners.  It figuratively took me from Communications 101 to 990 in the space of a few short years.  My tenure at my various radio jobs I think prepared me to take on any professional challenge my career could throw my way. And so far, so good!

Most of my professional career has been devoted to mission-driven organizations.  As such, I feel strongly about the mission of JJK Places, and want to see it excel in accomplishing immense long-term impact.  My ultimate goal for the company is that it especially helps children find stability and security in their young lives, so that they can not only become good students in school, but can establish a solid foundation to go on to great success as adults.

Friends are my favorite free time activity, well, friends and time spent together, whether that be in the mountains, out for a good dinner, or to a concert or other entertainment in Denver. People and the experiences we share with them comprise the highlights of our journey in life.

A future world where major diseases are conquered, prejudice is educated into oblivion, and all people have the abilities and tools to manifest success from their God-given talents and their hard work efforts.

For the last several years I have had my own consulting firm, Critter Thompson Consulting. This company is an independent, Colorado-based firm specializing in urban placemaking, biophilic design, geospatial analysis, and visualization of future projects working especially with communities.  My current work is intended to support multi-disciplinary design and planning teams which are working to achieve a more sustainable future for cities, communities, and individuals.

For three years I also was a part of the team at PlaceMatters (now the Radian | PlaceMatters organization) as Program Director.  PlaceMatters was as a local non-profit organization that was a kind of think tank for civic engagement in the urban planning process (their staff and expertise has now been incorporated into Radian’s own community engagement practice).

I began my career over 20 years ago by starting a boutique consulting firm focused on geospatial analysis and other GIS work. I particularly used my expertise to advance projects involving urban placemaking.  Over the years I have developed a unique specialized focus on innovative ways to use geospatial tools and its analysis techniques to create favorable and understandable site and project planning descriptions that have a high probability of being embraced by all those involved and affected by a project’s outcomes.  As result of the innovative work I have done, I have been frequently asked to give presentations and lectures on my geospatial analysis and visual communication techniques to professionals and students of design, planning and public health programs. 

My background also includes extensive professional and personal experience in the sustainable design and regional planning communities with a focus on integrating biophilic design principles and ecological design into real estate development and site design process. As a Systems Ecologist at the Mithun firm in Seattle, a national leader in sustainable architectural and site design, I worked to integrate biophilic design as a core element into their architectural practice. I also was involved in nationally recognized projects working on solving sustainability issues related to energy efficiency, public health, local food production, as well as urban placemaking, and social equity. One of these projects on which I worked was Denver Housing Authority’s redevelopment of their South Lincoln Homes housing complex into the now acclaimed and award-wining $197 million Mariposa District located near RTD’s 10^th and Osage transit light rail station. 

At the beginning of my career I was Research Consultant to the University of Washington, where I co-founded and was Research Director of the Decision Commons project. This innovative project was a research effort to develop visualization and analysis tools that would promote greater community engagement and lead to more resilient development of our cities and regions.

I have a Master of Environmental Science from Yale University, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in environmental Studies from Middlebury College. Early in my master’s education, I worked as a research assistant for Stephen R. Kellert, one of the two fathers of the biophilia discipline. Over the years, I continued to work closely with Professor Kellert, supporting research and advancing the integration of biophilic design thinking into the building design and site planning industry.

I have been fortunate to have worked closely with one of the two visionaries responsible for the biophilic design movement, Dr. Stephen Kellert, as well as work on a number of very innovative projects while associated with Mithun in Seattle.  One such project at Mithun envisioned a new living of urban living model.  The Center for Urban Agriculture combined urban living with cutting-edge sustainability, and a vertical agricultural landscape.  The 21-story structure was designed to use the vertical agriculture for educational and research uses around urban food technologies and food economics. This project instilled in me the perspective of always pushing the limits of what is normal and conventional in the design and planning fields – never stop seeking new ways of doing something is one of my person mantras since this early experience in my career.

Nature has been one of my primary souses of knowledge, temperament, and inspiration.  Since a young age I have spent considerable time in natural surrounds around the country—they have always been a source of rejuvenation and creativity. Nature is the ultimate master designer—I have learned over the years there are endless facets of design that can be pulled from nature.

I would like to help place JJK Places at the forefront of the biophilic design movement—as both practitioner and promoter of this important concept.  Upon initial explanation of biophilic design, many immediately view it as just a form of fancy albeit organic finishes for a building interior.  However, when one delves into the principles of biophilia and its outcomes on humans, only then does one become aware of its effective on heightened employee productivity, job satisfaction, more creative and collaborative staff, less absenteeism from work due to health and wellness issues, and over all, work spaces that are energetic and joyful to be an occupant of.

Anything outdoors.  My wife and family get out to nature and the mountains whenever we are able, even if only for an afternoon hike. I attended college in Vermont, and still long to get back there whenever I can—there is nothing better than a fall leaf-watching excursion through the Green Mountains of Vermont!

Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and world peace.  Hey, like I said, I went to college in Vermont, home state of Ben & Jerry. And well, the world peace part should be pretty self-explanatory! 

I do have vivid dreams.  After all I have spent considerable time over my career imagining visualization techniques for public/community audiences. So I think vividly!

Possessing a diversity of experiences doing community work and public outreach, as well as working within government systems to achieve socially conscious outcomes, I believe JJK Places offers me a broad canvas to express and implement my ideas of achieving public good.

I previously have done work for Denver’s Grow Haus, Meals on Wheels, and worked as a brand ambassador for multiple small local businesses. While attending CU Boulder, I was the Chair of Community Outreach for Global Brigades, a nonprofit health and sustainable development organization that works in Central American and West African countries. This organization works with student volunteers from North American and European Universities, and matches them with local staff to help work towards reducing social and economic inequalities in local communities.

Over multiple years through Global Brigades, I have spent time in Nicaragua working directly with rural mountainous communities addressing issues of public health, clean water access, and economic development. I also lived in Sweden where I was afforded the opportunity to study both their health care system and municipal sustainability programs. Additionally, I worked with the U.S. House of Representative’s 6th Congressional District to help draft and pass several bills involving issues related to the environment, healthcare, education, and public infrastructure.

I attended the University of Colorado at Boulder where I received my Bachelor’s degree in Integrative Physiology with a Certificate in Public Health. One of my core interests in the field of public health is seeking ways to address the systemic root causes of many health ailments rather than just repeatedly treating their symptoms. At JJK Places, I use this background to help contribute to the conceptual design of projects to make them healthier and more sustainable through spaces and design that help promote wellness and livability.

Life has taught me to find the silver linings. Life has taught me how important the people are. Life has taught me that clichés are cheesy and, yet, are often universal truths. Everything that happens in life is worth taking a lesson from, especially the traumatic and unexpected. I strive to seek out and take all those lessons to better myself and the world around me.

As a Denver native, I am very passionate about maintaining the cultural integrity of diverse populations and using it to further social justice within the city. I therefore would like to have a dramatic impact on furthering social justice in the City and County of Denver.

Cooking is number one!

There are so many practices I love to be a part of. I am an avid skier and gain so much joy from instructing new learners at Eldora on the weekends. I crave the practice yoga for my own mental, physical and emotional balance. I adore the creative outlet of playing the bass. However, cooking is my favorite activity. I grew up with home cooked dinners from my dad with my family sitting at the dinner table together. This has made dinner time an important ritual for me. Cooking allows me to be creative, to bring people together and simply to fulfill my basic need for good nourishment.

Balance for the world, myself and ones around me.