“In business you are required to make many daily decisions, and your decisions show the world your character, who you really are,” says Catherine Milburn, a CESR faculty member for the last 8 years. She began teaching for CESR when a few of her friends suggested that she might enjoy teaching. They thought that students might benefit from her industry and job related experiences. So she started teaching as a discussion leader for theIntroduction to Business course and found that she really enjoyed the students, and after a few semesters was appointed as a full-time instructor.
Today Milburn teaches the junior level required class, Business Applications of Social Responsibility and an elective course that CESR cross lists with the Accounting Division, Integrated Reporting for Sustainable Strategies.
Milburn comments, “I enjoy the energy and fresh outlook that students bring to class. The opportunity to interact and share ideas and knowledge with students and to watch students grow over three to four years is the best part about teaching.”
Milburn was born in Panama, lived in Columbia, Chile and New York, and completed high school in Highland Falls, NY. She came to Colorado as a freshman at the University of Denver and completed undergraduate and graduate studies at CU with degrees in Sociology and Accounting/Finance. After graduate school, she worked as a CPA for a large national accounting firm and later in industry as CFO and VP of Finance and Operations.
“I think that a series of life and work experiences contributed to my interest in social responsibility. As a child I had the opportunity to travel and live in other countries and was able to see cultures with a very wide income and wealth distribution. As I entered the workforce I made choices to work with companies and organizations that aligned with my personal values. During my years working in finance, accounting and public companies, I was often faced with ethical dilemmas – some small and a few large.”
Milburn is married with two sons. She loves to ski, hike, bike, garden, and read and travel.