Denver Film welcomes five new board members; appoints executive leadership team

DENVER – Denver Film, the membership-based, 501(c)(3) nonprofit cultural institution that produces film events throughout the year, including the award-winning Denver Film Festival and the popular summertime series Film on the Rocks, as well as operates the Sie FilmCenter, announced today the addition of five new members to its Board of Directors. In addition, the Denver Film Board elected its Executive Committee for the coming year.

Amanda Blaurock, Tom Downey, Sandy Holmes, Sylvia Lambe, and Nicole Maholic were each appointed to a three-year term by the existing board members with the opportunity to serve a consecutive three-year term.

“We’re incredibly grateful to be able to add these outstanding leaders from the business, finance, legal, media, arts and cultural communities,” said Denver Film Board Chair, Chad Jimenez. “This is a very talented, experienced group of new leaders that will add to the core of our leadership and help guide our collective vision for the organization in the years ahead.”

The new board members deliver a diverse range of experience and expertise:

Amanda Blaurock – Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Village Exchange Center, Blaurock has expertise in growth, accountability, and turnaround in both the private and public sectors. A mission-based leader, she is known for innovative risk taking, creative problem solving for complex societal challenges and for fiscal accountability. Through a 20-year journey of representing the United States government, Fortune 100 companies and family offices and co-founding and scaling an innovative non-profit, she has developed a unique personal and professional accountability for relationship management resulting in client and philanthropic investments.

Tom Downey – a regulatory attorney and shareholder at Ireland Stapleton, a Colorado-based law firm, with significant experience as both a government official and a private practice attorney. The majority of his practice consists of advising and representing corporate clients in the administrative, transactional, and disciplinary processes related to liquor licensing, legalized marijuana, and professional licenses governed by the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies. He also represents investors, creditors, developers, intellectual property holders, and others in and around licensed industries. Downey, who also served as president of the Children’s Museum of Denver, has chaired the boards of the Colorado Nonprofit Association and the Colorado Children’s Campaign and currently serves on the board of Civic Canopy.

Sandy Holmes – has been involved in entertainment, marketing and strategy working with both studios and the independent cinema community. As Co-CEO of Screen Insider, providing independent theatres their next generation cinema toolkit, or at 2656 Marketing, a company she co-founded in Los Angeles, the goal remains providing the best marketing tools available for cinema owners to reach the movie-going public. She also created a mobile marketing company 15 years ago, Phaz2, that introduced SMS and MMS to various sectors, including the Newspaper industry by utilizing the vast content resources of The Village Voice.

Sylvia Lambe – founder and CEO of Lambe PR LLC, a public relations company that specializes in promoting cultural and racial equity projects, is a BBC award-winning broadcast producer and journalist with more than 20 years of experience in communications. Her media career began in post-communist Poland at one of the first state deregulated radio stations. After relocating to Denver from the UK in 2017, she has worked for a wide range of organizations including; The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African History and Culture Black Pride, Colorado, NAACP, and The DROP 104.7. Lambe has also created a RMPBS documentary film celebrating Dr. Justina Ford, Colorado’s first licensed female Black doctor, and produced live TV productions for the Juneteenth Music Festival and Youth Violence Prevention Week.

Nicole Maholic – an account director for Salesforce.com, one of the largest software companies in the world, Maholic consults with enterprise retail organizations on their marketing, commerce, sales and service strategies. At Salesforce, she is a member of OutForce, one of several equality groups at SFDC that empowers underrepresented groups in the LGBTQIA community and encourages them to bring their authentic selves to work. A published poet, writer and artist, and a longtime patron of the arts and film, she holds a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts for Painting and a Bachelor of Science in Broadcasting Communications from the University of Tennessee.

The new board members bring the Denver Film board to 19 directors led by the recently elected executive committee consisting of:

Chairman, Chad Jimenez, attorney with Ballard Spahr LLP;

Vice Chair, Karen Brody, a judge in the Second Judicial District;

Secretary, Megan Lindstrom, Senior Director of Operations at the Global Down Syndrome Foundation; and

Treasurer, Micah Gurard-Levin, Director of Community Impact for Liberty Global.

About Denver Film
Founded in 1978, Denver Film is a membership-based, 501(c)(3) nonprofit cultural institution that produces film events throughout the year, including the award-winning Denver Film Festival and the popular summertime series Film on the Rocks. With a vision to cultivate community and transform lives through film, Denver Film provides opportunities for diverse audiences to discover film through creative, thought-provoking experiences.

The permanent home of Denver Film is the Sie FilmCenter, Denver’s only year-round cinematheque, presenting a weekly-changing calendar of first-run exclusives and arthouse revivals both domestic and foreign, narrative and documentary – over 600 per year, all shown in their original language and format. Denver Film’s one-of-a-kind programs reach more than 200,000 film lovers and film lovers-in-training annually.

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