Michael Scanlon, age 57 and a proud father of four, has been a resident of Commerce City, Colorado for over 15 years – and Adams County for 25 years.
Proud to be a Teamster in Local 455, he currently works pre-dawn at UPS as a Pre-Loader.
Michael also runs ClimateCon!, an annual conference celebrating climate innovation and inspiring action. He has hosted five ClimateCon!’s including the next one February 2, 2026 in Denver, Colorado.
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JUST A WORKING GUY
Michael worked in restaurants until he was 25. He was bussing tables at night to pay the bills like many of you.
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The only exception was when he interned in the office of Congressman Jim Jontz (D-IN) in 1990-91. From that moment on he had a “passion for politics“.
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COMPUTER TECHNICIAN & MANAGER
From 1994 to 2001, Michael worked as a computer repair technician. During this time, he also held management roles and led teams. When he started, people were installing CD-ROM’s. When he left the field, people were installing DVD-RW’s. In that span, he worked in casinos, the nuclear trigger facility in Broomfield (then being decommissioned) and Antarctica.
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FATHER OF FOUR
His proudest title since 2000 has been Dad.
Pictured here in 2004, he is thinking “Holy crap! How am I gonna care for two of these?” Fast forward to 2025, he is proud of his two grown sons, a daughter at CSU, and a son who’s a junior at STEAD.
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FINANCIAL SERVICES
From 2002-2016, he was in financial services. He sold mortgages, and then life insurance. Most of these years he was a financial advisor meaning he searched for people who wanted to invest in securities, and buy life insurance. From 2006-2010 he worked for a multinational insurance company when the economy crashed in 2008.
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AUTHOR
The 2008 Crash led Michael to write Confessions of a Mutual Fund Salesman, his first published book.
He has written two more books, Building Something From Nothing and Fail Your Way To Success. Both are available as a free pdf file by emailing michael@scanlonforcolorado.com.
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PUBLIC SERVICE
In 2015, Michael ran for City Council in Commerce City. He came up 8 votes short. In 2016, he started the Commerce City Chamber of Commerce. He signed up 100 businesses in 100 days, and it was off. It takes a village to start a chamber, and Maria Gonzalez, Debra and Rene Bullock, Tom Green, Dale Mingilton, and Phil Wilson were key movers and shakers in making it happen.
From 2016 until 2025, Michael served as a director with the Adams 14 Education Foundation , helping steer a nonprofit serving economically disadvantaged youth in Commerce City’s Adams 14 school district.
He also served six years on the South Adams County Water & Sanitation District Board, retiring from the board in 2022, when he was honored with the district’s DROP award for excellence.
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ENTREPRENEUR
In 2019, he pursued his entrepreneurial instincts. He started a company that combined innovation with working with people. The result was 20/20 Growth Conferences, a series of public conferences designed to explore the intersection of innovation and public policy.
March 5, 2020 – Cannabis Public Policy Conference
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The first Cannabis Public Policy Conference was held March 5-6, 2020. Roughly 100 people attended two days of breakout sessions and keynote speeches. The second Cannabis Public Policy Conference was held in September 2020, but due to an on-going COVID pandemic, it was a hybrid conference.
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HOCKEY
Michael Jordan popularized the phrase “love of the game.” Michael Scandon has a lot of love of the game of hockey. Playing, watching, and before he had kids, he even coached a little.
He grew up in Virginia, so he is a Washington Capitals fan. Don’t be fooled. He loves a good Colorado Avs team. He started playing roller hockey at age 24. He was absolutely horrible. Nowadays he has moved up to being merely bad. At 29, he started skating on ice. The ice gives the sport both speed and elegance. It’s what makes hockey the greatest game on earth.
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CANNABIS
Michael believes everyone should be able to smoke cannabis. When the federal government criminalize the cannabis plant in the late 1930’s, they decided to change the name to “marijuana” which was deliberate. Marijuana is the Mexican term for cannabis.
In 2012, Colorado voters approved the legalization of cannabis and Colorado put in place a common sense system.
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POLITICS
Michael’s first memory of politics was with his Mom at a very young age. He asked, “Why are you a Democrat Mom?” She said, “Because Democrats look out for regular working people like us.”
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In 1984, as a Senior, Michael’s teacher said the class would have a Presidential Debate. Someone played Reagan. Michael played Mondale. Like his county election results, Mondale got his rear kicked in Michael’s class.
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In college, Michael joined the Virginia Tech Young Democrats and attended a few state conventions.
In 1988, he supported the campaign of a young Colorado senator, Gary Hart. Everyone knew he was the front runner. And then he wasn’t.
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He started a student activist group – Students For A Free Society (SFS). About five or so students who started the group cranked out 3 editions of an alternative student paper.
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After college, Michael spent 6 months on Capitol Hill in DC as an intern. For a young idealist, Congress was a rude confirmation that money ruled and anything of substance was railroaded out of existence. It was the racist, Earth killing, war machine that he had been protesting against.
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He always had activism in his blood. In the years 1991-2004, after moving to Colorado, he did some organizing work with a clean water group in Denver. He also volunteered with the John Kerry campaign.
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In 2005, he volunteered with the Referendum C&D campaign. Ref C passed. Ref D was voted down. He thought, “Voters are more discriminating and more intelligent than people in politics give them credit for.”
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SUMMARY
Michael for the last 35 years has been working real hard to change the world and still has a “passion for politics”. He believes you will be the same intelligent voter that wants to put him to work for you.