A lifelong steward of nature, David Smith has combined his entrepreneurial knowledge with his passion for the outdoors to lead many nonprofit organizations through times of growth and change. His board service includes Eagle Valley Land Trust, Colorado Water Trust, Walking Mountains Science Center, Chair of The Nature Conservancy’s Colorado Chapter, and CSU Warner College of Natural Resources Center for Collaborative Conservation Advisory Board.

Through this service, he has had many roles, whether guiding staff in financial modeling of land conservation transactions, increasing the pace and scale to enable landscape scale conservation, or advising on undergraduate and graduate level curriculum, and networking, and supporting conservation initiatives deploying collaboration.

For Bluff Lake, he has been a mentor and guide in working with the executive team and board to focus on financial sustainability and realizing the full potential of this urban natural area in Denver.

David grew up in New England, attended Colorado College (B.S. mathematics) and Harvard Business School (M.B.A.). He served in the U.S. Army Reserve, and coached youth soccer for 12 years. He celebrates nature hiking, photographing alpine flowers, fly-fishing, snowshoeing and backcountry skiing. He and Jody, who recently passed away, shared a 53-year marriage, raising daughters Hadley and Hillary.

David’s successful career as an entrepreneur and executive included serving as one of five founding partners in 1979 of Newman & Associates, a niche investment banking firm focusing on multifamily affordable housing finance. The firm quickly became, and remained, the leading financier in the U.S. for this niche for over 25 years. He retired as CEO and President in 2008 when the firm was purchased by Citi Community Capital, where the team remains the leading financer for this niche.

“Bluff Lake Nature Center resonates to our family because it delivers very meaningful wins for nature conservation; environmental education; fostering community in Central Park, Aurora, Commerce City, Montbello, and other surrounding neighborhoods; human wellness with over 85,000 visitors coming to jog, walk, bird watch, find peace; and social justice, with this being an access point for so many who don’t have access to natural spaces,” says David, who has been a lead donor to Bluff Lake for several years, establishing The Hadley Smith Bluff Lake Nature Center Fund at The Denver Foundation in honor of their daughter who passed away in 2018, with a gift of $1,000,000. Read more about the Hadley Fund HERE.

“But it also resonates because, as a lifelong entrepreneur, I am always alert to whether an organization with a very worthy mission has unusually robust building blocks - building blocks that, should they be wisely used, will allow the organization to not only be sustainable, but to flourish. Bluff Lake Nature Center most certainly does, including their widely-resonant mission that addresses many of the environmental and societal challenges we face today, its accessible location, and strong fiscal position, due focusing on stabilizing the organization’s financials and infrastructure.

“So, yes, I believe Bluff Lake Nature Center is a very worthy cause. A very deserving cause. A cause where every donation makes an outsized difference.”