CWBA Board Year in Review: A Look at the 2025-2026 Initiatives Under the CWBA’s New Board Structure
- Anna Sturges
- 7 hours ago
- 7 min read
Implementing the New CWBA Board Structure
The 2025-2026 CWBA Board faced the challenge of executing its objectives while implementing a new board structure. In 2024, after working with an organizational consultant to examine the Colorado Women’s Bar Association’s leadership structure and operations from an organizational life cycle lens, the CWBA’s Executive Committee discovered that in order to promote strategic and sustainable growth, it needed to reevaluate the structure of the Board. After an extensive restructuring process, the new Board structure was finalized, approved, and, in the 2025-2026 fiscal year, the CWBA debuted a new leadership structure focused on growth, improvement, and efficiency.
Since May of 2025, the CWBA has operated under a leadership structure that relies upon two interlocking bodies: a smaller, strategic Board of Directors (Board) and a more targeted Leadership Advisory Council (LAC). The Board has 12 members, responsible for governance, strategic planning, and fiduciary oversight, with individual positions focused on Communications, Inclusive Programming, Community Action and Advocacy, Professional Development, Technology and Processes, and more. In addition to leading special projects, Board members support and collaborate with LAC committees.
Chaired by the President-Elect, the LAC includes all Committee Co-Chairs, Law School Chapter Representatives, and Partner Diversity Bar Association representatives, who serve as the operational arm of the CWBA. Within their respective committees, the LAC committee chairs work with volunteer committee members to focus on executing the association’s operational objectives, including organizing committee members and community partners, planning and executing events, and designing and leading initiatives. A noticeable improvement to the prior CWBA Board structure has been that LAC members are able to execute these operational goals without needing to shoulder monthly governance duties.
Editor’s Note: Looking to get involved? Join a committee! It’s a great way to connect other members, give back to the organization, and learn about the innerworkings of the CWBA! For more information on monthly virtual committee meetings: cwba calendar.
The LAC includes the following committees:
Policy Action Committee: Focused on legislative priorities, policy initiatives, and advocacy during session, including committee testimony;
Inclusive Education and Training Committee: Oversees educational programing, including all Continuing Legal Education offerings, with a focus on topics and perspectives benefiting CWBA members and other DEI-initiatives;
MembHERship & Mentorship Committee: Engaged in community-building, outreach, and identifying and improving gaps in representation in membership and access to mentorship opportunities;
EmpowHERment and PublisHERs Committee: Dual focused on operating the CWBA’s 1891 Blog and professional advancement and member recognition through award nominations, including the Mary Lathrop Award.
Inclusive Education and Training Committee: Focused on expanding discourse and education on increasing representation and overcoming barriers to inclusivity, including through the Equity in Action series.
Bench Builders Judicial Committee Co-Chair: Responsible for increasing representation of women and CWBA members on the bench, including supporting the endorsement process for District and Supreme Court vacancies.
Annual Convention Committee: Plan and execute all aspects of the Annual CWBA Convention, presented over multiple days in Vail, Colorado, in May.
The goal of this leadership restructuring was to enable the committees to deliver dynamic, meaningful programming with more robust support and less overlap. The success of the new committees and leadership structure over the past year has been a testament to the strength, support, and adaptability of this organization’s membership base and the hard work and dedication of its Board and LAC members.
Spotlighting Committee Initiatives and Accomplishments from the Year!
The Convention Committee
These dedicated committee chairs and members came together as a true team to plan the CWBA’s largest single event and make the 49th Annual Convention an experience members will not forget. They poured their time and talent into every detail in order to ensure Convention would be a space where open dialogue, meaningful connection, and community truly thrive, including introducing exciting new programming, such as a spirited debate between Attorney General candidates, timely conversations on the rule of law, community-focused panels, and a remarkable keynote from the former ACLU President Nadine Strossen, alongside informal nightcaps and gatherings designed to keep the connections going beyond these formal sessions.
Reflecting on her experience this year, Elizabeth Horton, Convention Committee Co-Chair and Customer Success Manager at Legal AI Solutions, remarks, “when I moved here, the CWBA welcomed me and showed me what it meant to be part of a community that genuinely supports women in the law. Chairing the Convention Committee has been my way of giving that same sense of belonging and support back, and I hope every attendee leaves Convention feeling the same connection and warmth I felt when I first walked through those doors.”
EmpowHERment & PublisHERs Committee
That committee remained dedicated to its goal of recognizing and promoting the remarkable accomplishments of CWBA members, including nominating members for professional awards in the community, highlighting members experiences and accomplishments on the award-winning blog, and supporting the inaugural Luminary Legacies Gala, where the Mary Lathrop Award recipient was recognized following extensive efforts by the committee’s due diligence team to learn about the nominees and to write articles about both the Mary Lathrop Award and Judicial Excellence Award recipients.
Editor’s Note: Blog article submissions and notice of member accomplishments deserving of recognition or award nomination are always welcome!
The Bench Builders Committee
With help from the committee members, the committee chairs saw tremendous success this year in supplementing the bench with candidates with humility, professionalism, and an unwavering commitment to fair and equitable treatment of all individuals appearing before the court. They oversaw the endorsement process for twenty-two (22) District Court vacancies and one Supreme Court vacancy, launching the new monthly Bench Builders Committee meetings with presentations from guest speakers who shared their experiences serving on a judicial nominating commission and as a magistrate judge, and supporting several key CWBA events, including the Guardians of Justice Panel and the inaugural Luminary Legacy Gala, where the Judicial Excellence Award recipient was recognized following countless hours by the committee of due diligence and research into the nominees.
MembHERship and Mentorship Committee
The committee spent this year creating numerous mentoring opportunities for women in the profession to show up for each other, including through formal LIFT mentorship matches, large-scale community events, and smaller gatherings, including Walk & Talk events, the Summer Social at Polsinelli, Friendsgiving at First Draft RiNo to support law student mentorship, the Membership Appreciation reception at Foley, and the LIFT Kick Off at Davis Graham, each of which gave women across practice areas and career stages a space to connect and support one another. The committee also streamlined operations and meetings to keep the focus where it belongs: on CWBA members and the relationships they build through this organization.
Kara L. Chrobak, MembHERship and Mentorship Committee Co-Chair and Founding Member of Bespoke Law, noted that “the best part of serving on the CWBA Board has been watching what happens when you give women in the profession a reason to be in the same room. Our job on the MembHERship and Mentorship Committee was really just to keep creating those moments, and the members did the rest. The CWBA works because women here genuinely want to lift each other up, and being part of that has been a privilege.”
Inclusive Education and Training Committee
In addition to coordinating continuing legal education opportunities for members, the committee organized, promoted, and executed a thought-provoking three-part series called Equity in Action, designed to equip legal professionals and business leaders with practical, actionable skills to combat bias and promote belonging. This year’s educational offerings gave members the opportunity to participate in conversations about implicit bias, practicing effective allyship, and utilizing bystander skills in action.
Public Policy Committee
The committee successfully advanced a number of policy initiatives that permitted the CWBA to continue its tradition of being a strong voice in public policy work. The committee kicked off the season with an inspiring fundraiser called Read. Resist. Repeat!, featuring a panel of brave librarians who were terminated for refusing to comply with censorship demands. The refreshingly honest discussion about placing one’s job on the line to protect the public’s right to read led to a powerful conversation about the escalating clash between censorship and intellectual freedom. Throughout the legislative session, CWBA continued its tradition of supporting and testifying in favor of legislation that promotes the interests of women, children, and our allies, such as bills addressing additional protections for survivors of intimate partner violence, a bill to create measures to improve black maternal health equity, and a bill ensuring continuations of essential childcare income tax credits. Perhaps most importantly, the committee continued to do the important work of demystifying the legislative process and encouraging members to get involved.
While adapting to the new leadership structure, the Board and LAC committees developed new and refined processes for carrying out their objective goals this year, including accomplishing a wide range of events and initiatives to the benefit of the members and the experience and representation of women in the Colorado legal community.
Editor’s Note: Interested in learning more about the history of the new CWBA’s leadership structure? Check out our five-part series documenting the CWBA’s multi-year effort to restructure its leadership. Catch up on the journey here: Reimagining the CWBA’s Leadership Structure: Final Reflections
Anna "Annie" Sturges is a labor and employment attorney in Taft Stettinius & Hollister’s Denver office. Her practice focuses on advising companies on state and federal employment statutes with a specialization in workplace safety and health compliance pursuant to OSHA and MSHA standards. She is an active-duty veteran who litigated federal court cases and administrative hearings for the Air Force.
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