Sue and Mike Rushmore are the 2025 Vail Valley Citizens of the Year
Special to the Daily

Vail Valley Foundation/Courtesy photo
Can an entrepreneurial approach be applied to help build a better community? The answer is yes, and perhaps no one embodies this idea better than Eagle County residents Sue and Mike Rushmore.
Their vision and energy have impacted the Eagle River Valley’s nonprofit world in many ways. They have looked for areas of need, filled those needs, built new programs and organizations, and bolstered existing ones. The end result is an impressive list of positive outcomes for the community.
For their many contributions, the Vail Valley Foundation is proud to recognize Sue and Mike Rushmore as the 2025 Vail Valley Citizens of the Year.
“Our community is incredibly fortunate that Sue and Mike decided to establish roots and to work tirelessly to make a positive difference here. They are truly deserving of this award,” said Mike Imhof, president of the Vail Valley Foundation. “They bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to our nonprofit landscape, and they know how to take something from vision to successful reality. We are grateful to know them and to enjoy their partnership in so many of our community’s most important pursuits.”
The Vail Valley Citizen of the Year is one of the highest honors in the community. It has been awarded since 1981 to deserving citizens who have provided broad support, vision, and leadership to the betterment of the valley. The Vail Valley Foundation manages the award, but it is not exclusively given to an individual or individuals involved with the Vail Valley Foundation. Recipients must show many years of dedication, leadership, and contributions to multiple nonprofits spanning numerous causes, and their efforts and impact must stand the test of time.

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“The Rushmores have had an incredible and outsized, positive, impact on our community,” said Chris Jarnot, chair of the Vail Valley Foundation Board of Directors. “They are a lightning rod for positive change, they inspire those around them, they are hands-on, and because they are such goodhearted people, everyone is always eager and excited to work with them. We are proud to honor them with this award.”
Sue and Mike Rushmore will be celebrated at the Vail Valley Foundation’s Black Diamond Ball on Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, at the Grand Hyatt Vail.

Filling the gaps
The Rushmores have longstanding ties to the valley. Sue’s family started skiing here in 1965 and Sue and Mike continued the tradition with their children, eventually buying their first place in 2002. Soon they were spending their summers here and, in 2011, Sue and Mike made Vail their primary residence.
As they looked for ways they could give back to the community that they had come to love, they started asking questions, doing research, and trying to discover the biggest areas of need. They were in their, “third phase” of life, as Mike Rushmore explains it. The first being education, the second being work — and the third?
“We didn’t yet know what that was,” Mike said.
Rather than choosing an area of philanthropy that intrigued them, and then creating a nonprofit to pursue that type of work, Sue and Mike took a different approach. They met with engaged and active community members. They asked what the biggest needs in the community were, and what could be done to address them. They asked what gaps needed to be filled.
It was an entrepreneurial approach.
This is how, in 2015, Mike founded the Eagle Valley Community Foundation (then known as Our Community Foundation). Mike worked with a group of cofounders including Seth Ehrlich, Jason Denhart, and Jeremy Rietmann to address the most pressing needs in the valley. The first area of focus was food insecurity which was addressed through The Community Market, providing healthy food to those in need.
Susie Davis, who had been an integral part of the Youth Foundation among many years of other leadership work in the community, joined the team and helped bring the vision to fruition, expanding the programs to include the MIRA Bus, a health and human services outreach program.
In 2020, Melina Valsecia took over as the executive director of the Eagle Valley Community Foundation. With broad experience in community organizing, advocacy and strengthening leadership of the Latino community, Valsecia is helping create an inclusive community where economic opportunity, innovation, and the ability to thrive within Eagle County can be attained by all community members.
Valsecia said that Sue and Mike’s support and vision have been instrumental in the creation and success of the Eagle Valley Community Foundation.
“Sue and Mike’s impact on Eagle County reaches far beyond what many see on the surface. They not only contribute generously but do so with genuine care and humility,” Valsecia said. “They embody what it means to be engaged and proactive citizens, always working to understand and address the real needs of those around them. Their approach has transformed the way our community tackles challenges, bringing others along in their mission to make a difference. Honoring them as Vail Valley Citizens of the Year is a tribute to their dedication, love for the community, and the lasting legacy they are building here.”

Guardians of our future
Education has always been a priority for the Rushmores. Upon moving here, Sue quickly became involved with Guardian Scholars, which has been a powerful tool to provide scholarships to students with a financial need in Eagle County. Founded by Ron Davis in 1998 in California, the Eagle County chapter of Guardian Scholars was initiated in 2003.
Sue serves on the executive committee of the board of directors, but her work with Guardian Scholars recipients goes far beyond financial support and her board role. She mentors students and helps them build the networks and connections that many students lack upon entry to college. She provides career advice, connects students to professionals in their field, and builds relationships with the students.
This “hands-on” approach is part of what makes the Guardian Scholars program so successful.
“Sue has been extensively involved in the success of the Guardian Scholars program, and being a founder of the Eagle Valley Community Foundation, I have been inspired by Mike’s vision and leadership,” Ron Davis said.

Help along the whole path of life
Colorado Mountain College’s Diana Scherr first met Sue and Mike Rushmore during their quest to create the Eagle Valley Community Foundation, but her relationship with them has grown in multiple ways over the years.
“Sue was a key stakeholder in many creative, groundbreaking ideas, including bringing a bilingual mental health professional to the CMC campus, supporting students through the Guardian Scholars program, and being part of CMC’s Women in Philanthropy, a group that pools their collective annual ‘dues’ to create a bigger impact on the students, programs & initiatives at the college,” Scherr said.
In 2017, with a grant from the Rob Katz and Elana Amsterdam Foundation, the Eagle Valley Community Foundation partnered with Colorado Mountain College to create a multi-pronged approach to addressing the needs of child care in the Valley. The program provided scholarships to remove barriers to creating a more educated child care workforce. When the original funding was depleted two years later, it was Mike and Sue who agreed to personally continue the program. They also provided significant funding to launch the free evening childcare center on campus for parents who take night classes.
“Sue and Mike have an uncanny knack for recognizing a challenge, reaching out to engage others in the solution, and then calling upon talents from many different sectors to address the need,” Scherr said. “Their combined volunteer efforts have changed the way this valley approaches child care, food insecurity, youth programming, access to college, mobile health care, supporting the Latino community and so much more. Imagine if we all just took one page out of their philanthropy handbook — the impact would be immense.”

A wide-ranging impact
The Rushmores have brought their enthusiasm and leadership to a wide range of organizations. Their work with the Vail Valley Foundation, through the Vail Valley Foundation’s YouthPower365, has been instrumental, and they have also been significant supporters of Roundup River Ranch, the Vail Veterans Program and many other organizations and programs in the valley and beyond.
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