Business Leader of the Year Honorees

Lynne Telford - President & CEO, Care and Share Food Bank of Southern Colorado

This year's Accolades Business Leader of the Year Award winner is well known as an exceptional community leader, with more than twenty years of for-profit business experience, along with extensive nonprofit experience through her work as Vice President of Pikes Peak United Way and as Executive Director of the Center for Nonprofit Excellence. Her wide-ranging community involvement positions her as an expert on a variety of nonprofit topics, including Standards for Excellence, board issues, and philanthropy.

After taking the helm of Care and Share as its President & CEO in March of 2011, she not only turned the organization around and restored the community’s confidence in its key services - but also improved development and donor programs to raise tens of thousands of dollars to ensure the sustainability of programs that deliver critical nutrition for low income and the working poor.

However, she became a true heroine during the Waldo Canyon Fire by managing a critical element of emergency response to one of the most devastating forest fires in our state’s history. Less than 24 hours from the start of the disaster, she mobilized Care and Share's volunteer collection efforts of food and other donations, just as the Waldo Canyon fire took hold in the foothills of the city’s western boundary. Logging multiple 12-16 hour shifts alongside her team of staff and volunteers, Lynne worked tirelessly for 23 days straight to collect and distribute nearly 750,000 pounds of food to displaced evacuees and dedicated firefighters. In context, this short-term feat represented nearly twice the organization’s annual volume. Before the disaster was fully contained, Care and Share had collected and processed over 1.5 million pounds of food to support the community.

Over many years, Lynne Telford served as CFO and Director of Community Impact at Pikes Peak United Way and as Executive Director of the Center for Nonprofit Excellence. There she led a volunteer initiative – the Quality of Life Indicators - which now provides a critical “report card” of how our community addresses issues of public health, aging, education, and economic well-being for business and individuals. Earlier in her career path, Lynne held a variety of positions in private high-tech and accounting firms in Colorado and California, including Controller at Atmel, World-wide Controller at ES2, and Vice President of Finance at Britton International and VSL Corporation.

A graduate of the Colorado Springs Leadership Institute (2005), Leadership Pikes Peak (2003) and the Community Leaders Program (2002), Lynne received a Woman of Influence award in 2004 and the Community Influence Award in 2010. Join us in congratulating her for adding the Accolades Business Leader of the Year Award to her long list of well-earned honors, on Facebook or LinkedIn.