Officers and Board

Society of Professional Journalists Colorado Pro officers and board members work on behalf of the chapter’s members to improve and protect journalism in Colorado. They plan events, write advocacy letters, coordinate award programs, work with colleges and universities and much more.  

Officers

President Doug Bell (until mid-2027)

Doug Bell, retired from a 40-year career in journalism and 30 years as a college instructor, serves as the education chair with the Colorado Pro Chapter of SPJ. Bell also chairs the ethics/media literacy committee for the Colorado Press Association. Bell has been presented SPJ’s First Amendment Award, as well as the Keeper of the Flame honor for career achievement. As an SPJ board member, Bell concentrates on networking with the state’s journalism schools and mentoring student journalists who are entering the job market. He also has been a guest speaker at high school and college classes, and coordinates the chapter’s annual scholarships. In his spare time, Bell plays ice hockey and tennis, and volunteers at BookGive, a nonprofit that re-homes gently used books to locations and organizations in need. He lives in Denver with his wife, Christa. 

President-Elect Marco Cummings (until mid-2027)

Marco Cummings is a digital strategist at The Denver Post, which he joined in August 2025, and previously was a digital producer at the Denver Gazette. He’s been a resident of Denver since 1987 and resides in Denver’s University Park neighborhood. He attended George Washington High School in Denver before double majoring in journalism studies and French language at the University of Denver. He has worked in newspapers since 2010, first as one-man sports department at the Valley Courier in Alamosa. Publications he has written for include Mile High Sports Magazine, 5280 Magazine, The Dallas Morning News and The Chicago Tribune. He primarily covered sports for over a decade, but as a digital producer, he covers a variety of topics, including crime, courts, the food and beverage industries, as well as business and finance. In addition to SPJ, he is a member of the Asian American Journalists Association. 

Secretary Beth Potter (until mid-2028)

Beth Potter teaches a student news service class at the University of Colorado Boulder with a grant from the Colorado Media Project and help from 10 rural and underserved newsrooms around the state. She defended her doctorate in 2022 in media research and practice from CU Boulder after an almost 30-year career as an editor and reporter both domestically and overseas. She is very worried about the state of local news, and she feels like she can most help by working with students to get them published, with editors and with community engagement projects. She previously worked at big-city papers such as The Denver Post and at small community weeklies. She traveled around the country in 2023 working for the Journalism Trust Initiative, a nonprofit group trying to help journalists connect more with audiences. Earlier, she worked overseas for about 10 years, including as managing editor of the Prague Post in the Czech Republic and as a wire service journalist for Reuters in Kosovo (in the former Yugoslavia), among other jobs. She is a deputy city editor at Prairie Mountain Media.

Treasurer Dennis Huspeni (until mid-2027)

Dennis Huspeni is city editor of the Denver Gazette and formerly covered business for the digital newspaper. He brings more than 30 years of journalism experience to the Colorado Pro Chapter board, mostly from newspapers like the Denver Post, Colorado Springs Gazette, Denver Business Journal and now the Denver Gazette. He also worked in public relations and media relations experience at Fidelity Investments. Huspeni was president of the Colorado Pro Chapter from 2012 to 2014, and is a Denver Press Club member. A Colorado native, Huspeni resides in Parker with his wife, Clare, and sheltie Finlay. 

Board Members

Michael Braithwaite (term ends 2027)

Michael Braithwaite’s journalism career began at Colorado College. He began writing for the student newspaper his freshman year and, by his junior year, had become its co-editor-in-chief, spearheading initiatives to improve the content, appearance and reach of the paper. The summer before his senior year, he and a friend received a grant for a six-week trip through Europe, during which they provided freelance coverage for The Gazette that detailed the war in Ukraine’s impacts on neighboring countries. Later that year, Braithwaite began a six-month stint as The Denver Post’s breaking news intern, during which he covered the local impacts of national stories, including student loan repayment, food insecurity and election fraud. After his graduation, he joined The Gazette as a part-time editorial assistant, compiling the daily sports agate and digital e-edition, before becoming The Denver Gazette’s breaking news reporter. In that role, he covered crime in metro Denver while also diving into complex enterprise stories, such as the sad state of Colorado’s rural highways and the trial of a man accused of fatally poisoning his wife. Recently, he moved to the organization’s digital team, a transition that gave him increased insight into the future of journalism as well as the skillset to adapt to it.

Michael de Yoanna (term ends 2027)

Michael de Yoanna is managing editor of the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration among local public media newsrooms in seven states and NPR. He brings more than 25 years of journalism experience to the SPJ Colorado Pro Chapter. He has previously served as editor-in-chief of two dozen hyperlocal newspapers in the cities and towns that surround Denver (Colorado Community Media) and as news director for KUNC public radio in Northern Colorado. He also worked for many years as an investigative reporter and producer with regional news organizations (Colorado Public Radio, 7News, the Colorado Springs Independent and the Fort Collins Coloradoan) and as a freelancer for Reveal, CBS News programs, and 5280 magazine in Denver. He worked the military and veterans beat for many years and directed the independent documentary “Recovering” about troops healing war wounds through bicycling. He has received more than three dozen awards, including a duPont-Columbia silver baton, five regional and two national Edward R. Murrow awards and a national Sigma Delta Chi (SPJ) award for best investigation. 

Thelma Grimes (term ends 2027)

Thelma Grimes is a seasoned editor and journalist with 25 years of experience leading newsrooms, creating impactful content and fostering strong community connections through storytelling. Currently she is deputy editor of Colorado Politics, and before that she was south metro editor and reporter for Colorado Community Media. Previously she was an editor and reporter for news outlets in Southern Arizona. She has received multiple awards from SPJ, the Arizona Press Club and the Arizona Newspaper Association.

Isabel Guzman (term ends 2028) 

Isabel Guzman is a reporter for Colorado Community Media, where she covers city councils, crime, local nonprofits and community events. Originating from a small town in Nebraska, she is a graduate of Metropolitan State University of Denver, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and media production and completed an undergraduate thesis on media coverage of Latinas in the United States. During her time as editor-in-chief of The Metropolitan, the university’s student newspaper, Guzman received several SPJ Mark of Excellence awards for investigative and protest coverage. Outside of reporting, she can be found painting, baking, walking her 13-year-old cattle dog or feeding her pet tortoise.

Mark Harden (term ends 2028)

Mark Harden has been an editor, writer and digital news manager in Colorado since 1993, following 12 years with daily newspapers in California and Washington. He was editor-in-chief of Colorado Community Media’s 24 newspapers; managing editor of Colorado Politics; news director, digital editor and reporter at the Denver Business Journal; and city editor and online news editor at The Denver Post. As a reporter he has covered breaking news, politics, business, health, science, the environment, education, media and the arts. Recently he has been a contributing reporter, editor, opinion columnist and photographer for The Post, the Colorado Sun, Rocky Mountain PBS, Front Porch and other outlets. Currently he is a writer for the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine. In addition to numerous SPJ Top of the Rockies and Colorado Press Association awards for editing and reporting, he has won SABEW’s national Best in Business award for breaking news reporting, the national AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award, the American Eagle Award from American City Business Journals, and the Morton Margolin Prize from the University of Denver for business reporting. And he was the lead singer for The Denver Post’s house rock band, the Corrections. His wife, Linda Kotsaftis, is editor of the Front Porch newspaper in Denver and Aurora.

Corey Hutchins (term ends 2028) 

Corey Hutchins is the co-director of the Journalism Institute at Colorado College where he teaches and maintains the database for the Colorado News Mapping Project, an initiative that seeks to help Coloradans find and learn more about existing sources of local news and information. Colorado Media Project, where he is an advisor, underwrites his weekly “Inside the News in Colorado” newsletter, which reports on, comments on, and analyzes the goings-on in Colorado’s media scene, connecting local developments to what’s happening nationally and exploring what makes the state’s local news ecosystem unique. For nearly a decade he has reported on the U.S. local media scene for Columbia Journalism Review and is a member of The Washington Post’s Talent Network. As a former alt-weekly reporter in the Palmetto State he was twice named South Carolina’s Journalist of the Year. His work has appeared on the cover of The Nation, and in The Washington Post, Slate, The Daily Beast, and Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab, among other outlets. He authored the chapter on media in the book “American Decades: 2010-2019,” published by Gale, and wrote the entry on public funding for SAGE’s “Encyclopedia of Journalism,” 2nd edition. He frequently appears in state and national media as a commentator about the future of local news. 

Michael Karlik (term ends 2027)

Michael Karlik is the judicial reporter for Colorado Politics and The Denver Gazette. He primarily covers the work of Colorado’s Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, as well as the roughly three dozen federal judges for the U.S. District Court and 10th Circuit, which are headquartered in Denver. Prior to that, he produced the investigative podcast “Tear It Down” and was the host of “City Council Chronicles,” a lighthearted podcast about city council meetings worldwide. Michael lives in Denver and is the caretaker/hostage of a 26-year-old cockatoo named Phoebe.

Ryan Lowery (term ends 2028) 

Ryan Lowery is an independent editor and reporter who returned to Colorado in 2025 after more than a decade in New Mexico, where he served two terms as the president of the SPJ Rio Grande chapter. He is currently the senior editor at Boomtown Los Alamos and has previously worked as the editor of New Mexico News Port, an outlet that showcases the work of student journalists at the University of New Mexico. Lowery is the recipient of the William S. Dixon First Amendment Freedom Award from the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government and the Sunshine Award from the New Mexico Press Association for his reporting that highlighted lack of transparency within multiple government agencies. He has also received several other awards from the New Mexico Press Association and SPJ Colorado Pro, including best solutions journalism for a series of stories on a law enforcement program in Alamosa that emphasizes recovery instead of jail for those struggling with addiction. His enterprise and investigative reporting work has been published by the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, States Newsroom and many others. He now lives near downtown Colorado Springs, just a few miles from where he grew up.

SPJ Region 9 Coordinator McKenzie Romero

McKenzie Romero is the editor of Utah News Dispatch, the newest outlet in the States Newsroom network. She started her career in Utah journalism when she was 15 years old writing for the Standard-Examiner’s teen section. After studying journalism and Spanish at Southern Utah University, she went on to more than a decade as a reporter and editor at Deseret News in Salt Lake City where she covered courts, crime and community, and led a team of award-winning journalists. A longtime member of SPJ, she is a board member for the Utah Headliners Chapter. She is a passionate advocate for open meetings and records, ethical reporting and the future of journalism. 

Past SPJ Colorado Pro Chapter Presidents 

  • Doug Bell 
  • Nina Bondarook 
  • Deb Hurley Brobst 
  • Fred Brown 
  • Cara DeGette 
  • Marge Easton 
  • John C. Ensslin 
  • Tony Flesor 
  • Sandra Fish 
  • Dennis Huspeni 
  • Kara Mason 
  • Joe McGowan 
  • Ed Otte 
  • Kristina Pritchett 
  • Noelle Riley
  • Paul Simon