Barbara O’Brien says she has sampled a number of parachutes in her career, jumping into jobs that took her from speechwriting to becoming a leader on children’s issues.
Now she wants to be Colorado’s lieutenant governor.
“If I really believe in the issues I believe in, then how do you say no to an opportunity?” said O’Brien, president of the Colorado Children’s Campaign until she ended a 15-year tenure there in February to pair with Democrat Bill Ritter.
Facing the challenges of a career change seems to be part of O’Brien’s fabric. She was finishing a doctorate in English from Columbia University when she realized teaching just didn’t excite her anymore.
“I decided to make a career change when we moved to Denver,” she said of her 1982 settlement here.
She immediately turned to bestseller Dick Bolles’ missive, “What Color Is Your Parachute: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers,” for guidance.
“I’m always up for an adventure,” said the California native who grew up just 25 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border in tiny Brawley. “So I tried on the parachutes that interested me.”
Her jobs wove through stints as speechwriter and policy wonk for Gov. Dick Lamm, University of Colorado at Denver’s director of campus affairs and then director of its Institute for International Business. She finally settled with the Children’s Campaign in 1990.
The 56-year-old O’Brien is matter-of-fact about her latest choice: She wants to make a bigger difference in Colorado.
“Maybe from the executive branch I can work on all those issues I love so much, from a more influential position,” she said.
Still, she said it won’t diminish her favored role as mother of two – both young men are on their own – and wife to physician Rick O’Brien.
“The ones who paid attention think of me as a pretty tough fighter,” she said. “But I have a total soft spot. I’m a devoted mother, and my husband is still the love of my life.”
They’ve been married 34 years and still make Wednesdays “date night.”
Savvy lobbyist
Publicly, O’Brien is known for her savvy and staunch lobbying on children’s issues, particularly education and health. Colleagues and foes say she makes it clear that it’s not about the politics and the results prove it.
“She’s first and foremost a pragmatist, and I’d never say she’s an ideologue,” said Albert Yates, president emeritus of Colorado State University. “If you have a view of her as a Democrat only, it’s about getting the job done, not the ideology or getting the credit.”
O’Brien had measurable success as co-chair with Yates of the committee that pressed passage of Amendment 35, the tobacco tax that funded health care for children and families, as well as the creation of the state’s Children’s Basic Health Plan, now known as CHP+, for the uninsured.
“Her general approach to a lot of issues or jobs or difficulties is very practical and problem-solving,” husband Rick O’Brien said. “One might think she’d be a tyrant. She’s not.”
O’Brien’s advocacy is anchored in one profound experience: her mother’s polio. Paralyzed from the neck down, Virgene Jack was hospitalized for two years – part of it in an iron lung. The remainder of her life was spent on a respirator and in a wheelchair.
“It was one of those things where you learned if you really liked responsibility or you get crushed,” said O’Brien, who was 5 at the time. “You learned to be calm in the middle of a crisis because you have no time to waste.”
The public health system helped the family avoid financial disaster, a debt O’Brien never forgot.
“We got help when we needed it, and it got us on our feet as a family and let us go on with our lives,” she said. “That’s where it’s rooted for me.”
If there’s anything bad to be said about O’Brien, according to interviews with peers and professionals, it’s her rigidity for statistics and data to prove a point.
Others say it’s her best attribute.
“She’d call it the data-driven advocacy. In the numbers she’d see which way the policy would make the most impact,” said Honey Neihaus, former vice president of operations for the Children’s Campaign when it had its biggest influx of money, an $8 million contribution from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“She expects you to think a problem through, to express it clearly.”
Failed Manual High effort
O’Brien is also demanding.
“She doesn’t suffer fools very well,” said former employee Van Schoales, now an urban education specialist at the Piton Foundation.
“Issues for her are driven by what she really feels is right, even if it means that in the short term it would annoy people who were seen as partners and friends,” Schoales added. “Over the long haul it was probably the right thing to do anyway.”
While health care for uninsured children is O’Brien’s trophy, the small-school initiative at Denver’s Manual High School is her self-admitted failure. The school closed last year after it had been divided into three smaller ones, funded in part by Gates money.
“Yes, it’s embarrassing to fail and, yes, you feel horrible for the kids whose lives were uprooted during a couple of tumultuous years,” O’Brien said. “But small schools is still the way to go.”
O’Brien said mistakes and gaffes are necessary parts of success.
“We can’t be afraid of failure just because it was a complicated task,” she said.
Staff writer David Migoya can be reached at 303-954-1506 or dmigoya@denverpost.com.
