She was Denver’s first female Manager of Safety in the early 1990s under Mayor Wellington Webb. She then became Chief Deputy Attorney General in charge of Civil Litigation and Employment Law in the Colorado Attorney General’s office where she supervised over 30 trial lawyers.
Beth is currently completing her third term representing House District 8 in east-central Denver, where she has been the leader in healthcare reform and criminal justice matters. She served on the task force that examined Colorado’s involuntary mental health commitment process.
In 2014, Beth passed legislation to help struggling Coloradans experiencing foreclosure stay in their homes and sponsored a bill to strengthen Colorado’s human trafficking laws and assist vulnerable Coloradans who are subjected to this devastating activity.
Beth has also passed important legislation to require universal background checks for gun purchases and to keep guns away from convicted domestic violence abusers and other dangerous individuals. She successfully passed legislation to increase the role of judges in deciding when juveniles should be prosecuted as adults.
Beth is a founder and former president of the Colorado Women’s Bar Association. She served as first Vice-President of the Denver Bar Association and on the board of governors of the Colorado Bar Association. Beth also served on Gov. John Hickenlooper’s transition team as a member of his public safety committee and on Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s search committee for a new chief of police.
She has been active in community and nonprofit organizations, including serving as chairwoman of the long-range planning committee for the Denver Botanic Gardens. She is the chairwoman of the Tony Grampsas Youth Services Program which distributes grant money throughout the state to programs that work with youth to keep them from getting into violence and crime and was a board member of the Denver Legal Aid Foundation. She was chairwoman of the Safety and Security Committee at Denver East High School and continues to coach East’s Constitutional Scholars team. She also served on the Judicial Selection Committee to recommend judges for the Colorado Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals.
Beth earned her law degree at Georgetown University Law School. She graduated magna cum laude from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, with a B.A. in American studies. She and her husband, Christopher, have two children — a son, Chris, who graduated from East High School in 2007, and a daughter, Lizzy, a 2010 East grad. Both graduated from Amherst College in Amherst, MA. Their golden retriever, Rascal, is also part of the family.