Colorado College honors alumni, students, and faculty who exemplify our innovative and adventurous spirit through the Faces of Innovation project.Faces of Innovation honorees are true liberal arts thinkers who make connections across the arts, humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences and problem-solve using creativity and collaboration.

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Watch video interviews of these Faces of Innovation honorees »

Anne Basting ’87

Could theatre improvisation techniques, play, and imagination help older people with profound disabilities? Basting, a professor of theatre at the University of Wisconsin, and a MacArthur “Genius” Award winner, had an inkling that it could. She founded Time Slips Creative Storytelling, a nonprofit whose mission is to bring meaning and purpose into the lives of older adults regardless of physical or cognitive challenges.

Cassidy Lam ’19

How do you convince the male-dominated, venture capital start-up world that a “period product” is marketable? That was just one of the challenges that faced Lam, a CC student who started Chica Chocolate withher friend and won CC’s 2018 Big Idea pitch competition to get her fledgling company off the ground. Chica Chocolate produces high-quality chocolate truffles infused with herbs specially formulated to support a healthy menstrual cycle, and distributes them to women on a subscription basis.

Maia Wikler ’15

“Our generation especially, we really are the ones who have a vision of the future to put forward.” Wikler served on a delegation of youth climate justice activists at the United Nations climate talks in Bonn, Germany (COP23). Wikler’s delegation, SustainUS, works to expose the disproportionate effect of climate change on youth and indigenous peoples.

Alan Woo ’71

“It’s not about career-building. Anyone can have a career. But to have a lifetime of work that you’re satisfied with, that you feel you’re making a difference with, that’s really more incredible.” Woo should know. For 40 years he’s worked with anti-poverty programs, feeding the hungry, and mentoring at-risk youth. He has worked to build healthy communities and improve economic opportunities for low-income disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Marie Davis Green

Davis Green, associate professor of theatre, teaches performance design at CC but extends her work far beyond the stage. Collaborating with professors of environmental science, she uses her design expertise to transform underused community spaces. Using the platform of an interdisciplinary course, she and her students came up with a plan to transform a nondescript 1960s-era strip mall into a vibrant space for the community to gather.