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Getting to know … Allie Coppeak

Sarah L. Stewart
Kristin AndersonLongtime Eagle County resident Allie Coppeak sits next to her autographed 1991 art poster for the Bolshoi Ballet Academy at Vail, which was one of her major contributions during her 20-year career with the Vail Valley Foundation.
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We know Allie Coppeak best for her work over the past 20 years with the Vail Valley Foundation ” but that’s just the most recent of several lives she’s led.

She began as a singer, traveling throughout the Southeast as an opera, blues and classical performer. Next she turned her attention to family, and then, in 1988, she came to Vail to work for the foundation. While there, she helped found the Bolshoi Ballet Academy at Vail (which later became the Vail International Dance Festival), helped coordinate the 1989 Alpine Ski Championships and was the foundation’s key fundraiser for more than a dozen years.

So what does the next stage hold for Coppeak, who retired last year?



“Travel,” she says. “And I have lots of (fundraising) projects to work on.

I enjoyed everything I did there. I enjoyed my initial involvement in the 1989 Alpine Ski Championships. It was exciting. It was an area I’d never been involved in before. My prior life was music, so to be involved in the ski industry was a completely new thing for me. … My time at the foundation has been a highlight of my life.

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One fond memory would be the day that the foundation was awarded the 1989 Alpine Ski Championships. We had everyone collected at our office, and when they made the announcement that we had won the bid, that was once again very exciting to me. … The foundation will always be a huge part of my life ” the friends I made, fellow workers, as well as the friendships that I have established throughout the community through my work.

I’ve found it difficult to let go because I have been there for 20 years. It’s difficult to let go of the work, but I look forward to continuing the fundraising and relationships that I have there. Every job needs new blood … I’m very pleased with what I did there and looking to the future for the foundation.

It’s gone from a tiny community where you knew everyone to basically a small city. I’ve watched many, many changes. Sometimes I think it’s too large, on the other hand everything progresses along. To have a future, you have to have progress. But there are many times that I wish for the earlier days.


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