While Reeves Brown has spent most of his professional life advocating for Colorado’s rural communities and facilitating dialogue among the state’s increasingly diverse constituencies, his varied background also includes experiences riding bulls in Montana’s rodeo circuit and serving on the Governor’s cabinet.
Growing-up on his family’s 5th-generation cattle ranch in remote east-central Montana, Reeves developed a love of ranching and the outdoors, but with a limited tolerance of sub-zero weather. “I spent my formative years freezing to death on the back of a horse trailing cattle through windblown snow and thinking ‘When I grow up, I am SO moving south!’” After graduating from Montana State University with a BS degree in Agriculture Business, Reeves moved to Colorado which he’s called “home” ever since.
From 1989-97, Reeves served as the Executive Director of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association where he led several groundbreaking projects, including the creation of the Colorado Riparian Association, the restructuring of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s rangeland advisory committees, and the creation of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agriculture Land Trust (which has led to the protection of over 2 million acres of agriculture land across the western United States).
Reeves also served for 10 years as the Executive Director of Club 20, the diverse coalition of thought leaders, businesses, local governments and non-profit organizations advocating for the 22-county Western Colorado region. This experience of engaging diverse interests to find common sense solutions inspired Reeves to later create the non-partisan Building a Better Colorado project which engaged over 3,000 civic leaders in 37 communities across Colorado in three statewide conversations over five years, ultimately resulting in four amendments to the Colorado constitution to improve the state’s ballot process, election system and fiscal policy.
Reeves served on Governor John Hickenlooper’s cabinet as Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) from 2011-2015. During his tenure, Reeves oversaw DOLA’s administration of federal disaster funding and recovery in response to the 2013 flooding of Colorado’s northern front range, and also led the creation of the innovative Fort Lyon recovery-oriented transitional housing program – the State’s first effort to combat homelessness in Colorado.
In 2020, Reeves and his wife, Dianne, picked Granby, Colorado, to build their forever home, which they started building themselves in 2021 and where they now live full-time. “We love Granby; the sagebrush-covered hills remind me of my Montana ranching roots, and Dianne has fond memories of visiting family here as a young girl. Granby is blessed to have both strong rural roots and diverse new neighbors, and we appreciate both.”
Reeves and Dianne have four children (Kyler, Keaton, Seve and Abigail), a cat with an attitude, a funny-looking dog, and grateful hearts for God’s boundless grace.