Congressman Jared Polis

In 2000, Jared Polis won statewide office to the Colorado State Board of Education and served as the youngest Chair in the history of the Board. During his six-year tenure, he was a strong advocate for school reform and enhancing educational opportunities. He played an instrumental role in the passage of Amendment 23 to improve state funding for public schools.

He founded the Jared Polis Foundation in 2000 to improve and expand access to education. Its annual Teacher Recognition Awards celebrate the enormous commitment and importance of teachers and hundreds of teachers and their schools have received micro-grants. The Community Computer Connection program refurbishes and donates more than 3,500 computers a year to schools and non-profit organizations that serve disadvantaged students.

Jared also founded two innovative charter schools that meet the needs of underserved students. In 2004, seeing the difficulty faced by older immigrant youth in mainstream public schools, he established the New America School, with its first campus at the Community College of Aurora’s Lowry Campus, to extend the benefits of English literacy and a high school liberal arts education to all students. One year later, seeing the challenges faced by teens who struggle with homelessness or unstable living conditions, he co-founded the Academy of Urban Learning which opened in the fall of 2005.

Since co-founding his first company, American Information Systems, while still in college, Jared has launched several successful business ventures, including bluemountainarts.com, Proflowers.com and other online start-ups; a chain of movie theaters that screen first-run Hollywood films dubbed or subtitled in Spanish, including Cinema Latino in Aurora, CO; and most recently, Open Ocean Aquaculture. He has been named an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year and one of the top ten young entrepreneurs by Success Magazine.

Jared serves on the board of directors of Colorado Conservation Voters, the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, and the Anti-Defamation League, and was Vice-Chair of the Colorado Commission for High School Improvement. He was also Chairman of the Commission on Financial and Investor Literacy, established by the National Association of State Boards of Education.

Jared received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Princeton University and lives in Boulder.

Download Jared's official photo and biography.