Distinguished Alumni and Service Awards

The Bascom Group​ | Corporate Partner Service Award

Bascom is a private equity firm specializing in value-added multifamily, commercial, and non-performing loans and real estate related investments and operating companies. Bascom sources value-added and distressed properties—including through foreclosure, bankruptcy and short sales—and repositions them by adding extensive capital improvements, improving revenue and reducing expenses. Bascom, founded by principals Derek Chen, Jerry Fink, and David Kim, is one of the most active buyers and operators of apartment communities in the United States. Since 1996, Bascom has completed more than $21 billion in multifamily value-added transactions, encompassing more than 350 multifamily properties and 100,000 units. Bascom’s subsidiaries and joint ventures include Bascom Value Added Apartment Investors, Shubin Nadal, Spirit Bascom Ventures, REDA Bascom Ventures, Bascom Northwest Ventures, Bascom Arizona Ventures, Harbor Associates, Village Partners Ventures and Realm Group. Bascom’s subsidiaries also include Premier Workspaces, one of the largest privately held executive suite, coworking and shared workspace companies in the country.

Peter B. Cushman | Alumni Service Award

Peter is a co-founding partner with Oakwood, which invests nationally in commercial properties including multifamily, industrial, senior housing, office, retail, mixed-use and land. Previously, he held development positions in Colorado, California and New York with Bancroft Capital, The Robert Green Company and Louis Dreyfus.

In addition to his bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado Boulder, he holds an MBA from the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver.

Peter is an active volunteer at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He serves on the board of directors for the Leeds School of Business and the CU Real Estate Center. He also serves on the Boy Scouts of America Denver Area Council. Peter enjoys mentoring students at both CU and DU. He is a council member of the Urban Land Institute. He resides in Littleton with his wife and two children.

Walter A. (Buz) Koelbel, Jr. | Distinguished Alumni Lifetime Service Award

The Koelbel family continues to be actively involved in the future of Leeds through the evolution of the physical facility on the CU Boulder campus as well as the CU Real Estate Center.

Koelbel & Company is one of the longest continually operating real estate development and investment companies in Colorado. The company’s efforts are focused on development of office parks, master-planned residential communities and real estate investments. Premier projects include: The Preserve at Greenwood Village, Pinehurst Country Club, Centennial Valley Business Park, Rendezvous in Winter Park, urban infill homes, affordable housing, and Catalyst HTI in RiNo, a healthcare innovation ecosystem office development.

Buz’s professional and civic involvement includes the Urban Land Institute, with six years of service as international trustee; co-founder and vice chair of Denver South Economic Development Partnership; past chair and board member of Economic Literacy Colorado; Denver Museum of Nature and Science board member; and co-founder of The Common Sense Institute. Buz is married to Sherri, and together they have four children and 10 grandchildren.

Katherine Lewis | Young Alumni Achievement Award

In addition to her work as a user experience engineer with LinkedIn, Katherine also is the advocate for digital accessibility at the company. She is also the executive director of The Leon Foundation of Excellence, a leadership program for youth founded during her senior year at Leeds with the support of her professional mentors. Katherine hosts the Opportunity Made Podcast, is a keynote speaker, global partnership ERG (employee resource group) leader and a member of the Leeds GOLD Board. Previously, Katherine taught elementary school with Teach For America. In honor of her family’s business legacy and inventions in tech, Katherine founded the Barnes Memorial Scholarship, which supports students at Leeds. Her mission: Serve widely, give greatly.

Lori Seward | William H. Baughn Faculty Service Award

Lori earned her PhD in operations research from Virginia Tech, where she also earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in industrial engineering. After several years working in industry, she joined the Leeds faculty in 1998, where she specializes in statistics and operations management. She is the co-author of Applied Statistics in Business and Economics, used widely at business schools across the country, including Leeds.

Lori has contributed significantly to curriculum design throughout her time at Leeds. Her recent accomplishments include contributing to the design of BASE, Leeds’ cross-disciplinary undergraduate program, where she served on the initial teaching team. Since 2018, she has been the faculty director of Leeds’ MBA programs. In this role, she led the redesign of the full-time and evening MBA curricula, helped launch the hybrid MBA program and led the work to successfully launch Leeds executive MBA program.

Adam Warner​ | Service Award

Adam is responsible for all of Key Equipment Finance’s commercial and bank-based equipment lease and finance efforts, as well as equipment finance programs for the technology, energy, healthcare, industrial and government vertical market segments. He is also responsible for overseeing the equipment finance programs for all of the company’s vendor customers, including equipment manufacturers and distributors, and for the company’s specialty finance and distribution services unit.

Headquartered outside Denver, Key Equipment Finance manages a $13 billion equipment portfolio with annual originations in excess of $5 billion. The company employs approximately 300 people, and has been in the equipment financing business for almost 50 years.

Adam holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Elmhurst College, in Elmhurst, Illinois. He is a member of the Leeds School of Business Advisory Board  at the University of Colorado Boulder.