Align the top. Accelerate everything below it.

Ken is an entrepreneurial executive who has spent more than three decades building strategy, technology and information risk programs for national and global companies and for public education. He founded Aabren Group to bring that executive experience to organizations that need it without a full-time hire.

His career started in communications technology. As VP of Engineering and later VP of Marketing at Data Race, a publicly traded company, he led product development and go-to-market strategy and designed the industry's first simultaneous voice and data modem. He holds a patent for extending office telephony and network data services to remote clients over the internet.

He then moved into information security, as CEO of intrusion-detection software company Turillion and as a consultant with Accenture. At Newmont Mining he built and ran a Sarbanes-Oxley compliance program across five continents and led global security strategy. At ProBuild, the nation's largest supplier of building materials to professional builders, he built the information security program from the ground up as VP of IT Governance and Information Security Officer.

In education leadership, Ken served as President of the Jeffco Board of Education, overseeing an 85,000-student district with a budget of about $1 billion, as Executive Director of Education reEnvisioned BOCES, and as Superintendent of Woodland Park School District. He holds a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Colorado Denver and speaks Spanish.

Elisabeth "Lis" Richard has 39 years of experience in K-12 education, much of it in educational leadership roles. Throughout her career, she has filled numerous foundational roles, ranging from classroom teacher and athletic coach to principal and school district superintendent, as well as education board chair.

She holds a Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Colorado Christian University and two undergraduate degrees in education.

Lis has held a variety of high-profile administrative positions across Colorado public and charter school systems, culminating in BOCES board chair and superintendent of colorado public school districts. As superintendent, she focused on curriculum alignment, school policy, and classroom practices. Her tenure was noted for expanding grant programs, growing enrollment, implementing a community food pantry, and integrating advanced Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs. She also led Monument Academy as principal for the public charter school located in Monument, Colorado.

Board President of a BOCES, Lis served a Colorado Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) focused on education innovation, high academic achievement, and flexible learning models across the state.

Beyond district employment, Mrs. Richard is active in educational consulting and curriculum development. She and her husband, Dave, founded the Helping Schools Thrive educational consulting firm. Through HST, she has worked with Colorado school boards and districts to audit, evaluate, and vertically align their social studies and general K-12 curricula. She has also served as the Education Coordinator and lead curriculum developer for the Center for American Values, based in Pueblo, CO, where she designed civic education programs and connected students with Medal of Honor recipients to emphasize character development.

Lis is the author of The Pocket Handbook for Teaching Reading: An Educator's Guide to Developing Literacy, and currently has two other works in the publishing phase.