Meet the members of the Aspen School Board

A variety of experience is slated for the Aspen School District Board of Education following Tuesday’s election of one returning and two new members. 

Current Board President Christa Gieszl was reelected to the board, followed by local freelance journalist Elizabeth Stewart-Severy and entrepreneur William Wallace Burke Gilmore. The three candidates ran unopposed for the three open seats after Board Member Suzy Zimet reached her term limit this year — two, back-to-back four-year terms — and School Board Secretary Stacey Weiss chose to step down after her first four years on the board.  

Gieszl, who ran for her second term to fill the third open seat, said she really enjoyed working with Zimet and Weiss. She added she’s excited to work with the newly-elected board members, who she said both have young children and could offer a perspective on younger students’ academic trajectory. 

“I love the energy they’re bringing in,” Gieszl said.

Elizabeth Stewart-Severy

Newly elected board member Stewart-Severy is a journalist, former teacher, and parent. 

She grew up in Aspen, attending the Aspen schools from kindergarten through 12th grade. Following her education, which included a Bachelor’s as well as a Curriculum and Instruction Master’s degree from CU Boulder, she was hired by the Aspen School District, where she taught English and journalism for seven years. 

She stopped teaching to accept a job in 2016 at Aspen Public Radio, where she worked as an environmental reporter, followed by a stint as the editor of Aspen Journalism’s environmental desk. Since late 2020, she has worked as a freelance journalist for Aspen Journalism. 

She said she chose to run for the Aspen School Board because she felt it was important to fill the vacating seats with someone who has experience working in education, especially as her kids, who are 4 and nearly 7, come of school age. 

“I think the school board is an incredibly important position in our community, and I think it’s helpful to have people who have a background in education sitting on that board,” she said. 

As a newly elected board member, Stewart-Severy hopes to prioritize responsible financial stewardship for the district and continue to support ASD’s thriving curriculum, like its International Baccalaureate program.

She added that, outside of the district funding challenges, the greatest challenges the district must focus on are student and teacher wellbeing.

“In terms of teacher recruitment and retention, learning gaps, polarization, safety, technology, digital literacy,” she said, “I think all those things are ongoing challenges in public education that our school district faces. And I think addressing those things through supporting mental and physical health and well-being can supply a foundational level of support that our schools need.”

William Wallace Burke Gilmore

Gilmore comes to the school board as an entrepreneur, a designer and manufacturer, and a parent. 

Born and raised in New York City, he lived in Aspen for a winter after attending Wesleyan University, before leaving to work a number of different automotive service, restoration, and fabrication jobs. 

He returned to Aspen in 2018 and, in 2019, he cofounded Skyhook Solar, a solar energy company originally based in Woody Creek that powers e-bike shares, like WE-cycle, as well as electric vehicles. 

A parent of fourth, sixth, and eighth grade students in the Aspen School District, Gilmore has been involved in the robotics team at the Aspen Middle School, has served on the District Accountability Committee for the last couple of years, and has been a part of conversations on innovation at the school district, “broadly speaking,” he said. 

“So I’ve been around the … school district and thought that’d be something to offer in terms of directing the high level policy of the school district,” he said. 

He added that he was also concerned that there were not immediately candidates stepping forward to serve on the school board as the seats were slated to vacate. He worried someone with ideology contrary to the existing board could walk into a seat without legitimate vetting, prompting him to run.

During his tenure on the board, he hopes to manage the board’s finances to ensure the district can attract and retain the best possible teachers, support the school’s outdoor education programs, and try to help students prepare for their futures. 

“The best we can do is say, we’re going to do the best we can at predicting what the world is going be like in five or 20 years,” he said, “and we’re going to work backwards from that prediction to what skills and abilities and whatever we can do as a school district to prepare kids for that world that we’re envisioning, and to … periodically update that forward-looking vision.”

Christa Gieszl

Gieszl returns to the school board after serving her first four-year term from 2021 to 2025. She served as president for two of her first four years. 

Previously a primary care doctor in Montrose and part-time physician for the town’s U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs clinic, she and her family moved to the Roaring Fork Valley in 2017, where she got a job in the Veterans Affairs clinic in Glenwood Springs — she still works there to this day. 

Gieszl, who lives in Snowmass, said she first ran for the school board in 2021 due to the pandemic.

“I felt school was important, not only for the academic component but for the social component,” she said. “I worked with a group of three other women to bring testing here to our schools, and we would actually test the kids to keep them in class and school as much as we could during that period of time.”

Once on the board, she became interested in other critical topics in the school district like funding, as well as staff housing — something she said was a dire need when she started. 

“If we did not have a house, they (staff) would not accept a position at our school,” she said, noting that skyrocketing housing prices have been pushing teachers out of the market.

The district used funds from a $95 million bond passed in 2021 to acquire 55 workforce housing units, Gieszl said. She plans to continue to focus on housing over her next four years on the school board, which comes in the wake of the recent education-related ballot measures passed by local voters to bolster school district funding.

“In order to … maintain the level of service we’d like, to maintain licensed teachers,” she said, “I think that’s going to need to come with housing.”

Skyler Stark-Ragsdale can be reached at 970-429-9152 or email him at sstark-ragsdale@aspentimes.com.