Tonight, in our first Business of Colorado special, we're diving into the force that shape Colorado's industries and economy.

We're going to explore how AI is transforming education.

We'll talk about how it's helping teachers and the impact it will have on future generations.

We're also going to celebrate 50 years of tailoring and style at Teds clothiers.

Plus we'll look at the big question that many businesses are grappling with.

Where do we work?

Do we work from home?

Do we work in the office or a combination of both?

Then join us for a great conversation with Mary Wynn, founder of all of And fetch!

We caught up with Mary during Colorado Startup Week, and we talked about how she took a big leap to follow her passion.

All of this and more on studio 12, a special Business of Colorad edition, which starts right now from the Five Points Media Center in the heart of Denver, Colorado.

This is studio 12.

Hello, I'm Frannie Matthews, host and executive producer here at PBS 12.

Tonight we're focusing on the business of Colorado.

Well, highlight some of our strongest stories about business and entrepreneurship and the people that are shaping Colorado's economic future.

As we spend this hour together.

I hope you come away wit a deeper sense of the many ways our state is creating opportunity, driving growth, and building a strong, resilient economy across the country.

Companies are wrestling with the future of work.

Should employees be at home, i the office or some mix of both?

Here in Colorado, I bought a has made a clear and deliberate choice that they believe is helping build a stronger culture and a stronger downtown.

I had the chance to see I bought this new approach first hand, and to learn why they are investing in collaboration and connection in the heart of Denver.

Brian thank you for joining us today.

I am at a modest headquarters in downtown Denver with Brian Leach, the CEO.

Tell us about I bought it, I bought it was born right here in Denver about 13 years ago.

We started out at 18th and Blake and the basement of an old fire station, and we were a direct to consumer cash back app.

So you downloaded a mobile app, you bought things in the grocery store.

You took a picture of your receipt with your app or your phone, and we gave you cash back reward directly on to a PayPal account.

Talk to me about this commitment that you have made to downtow Denver with this office space.

You know, I bought has always been very proud to be a Denver company from the very earliest days when I would fundraise and people would say, why aren't you in California?

Why are you in Boulder?

I would explain to them that I'd rather be in Denver than in either of those places, because it's actually a fantastic place to find talent to build a business, a community that's really inclusive and supportive of each other.

And so when we began, not only were we located in LoDo, but we also made sure that everybody knew we were a Denver company for the first several years when you loaded our mobile app, it said, designed and built in Denver, Colorado with a little mountains on it.

I think the thing that you have to think about when you are making a decision, like the one we did to invest in in a place like this for our employees, when certainly a lot of businesses are making the choice to go fully remote, save on, the overhead of rental expenses, you have to think abou who you are as an organization and what, what are what are the the things that are most important about your culture?

And so sense of place has always been really important to Ibotta, and we've always been a company that highly values the idea of bringing people together to collaborate in person.

We're on the 16th Street Mall, which Denve just completely renovated and, you know, it's it's vibrant, right?

And we want to be not only part of that ourselves, but we want to lead a movement back into downtow Denver and lower downtown Denver amongst all the othe tech companies that are deciding what should we be in office?

Should we be downtown Should we be in the tech center?

We want them to come to the the urban core of Denver and be part of a critical mass of innovation?

Tell me a little bit about your thought process on creating the space for your teams.

Yeah we always want to create a place where we can convert the highest percentage of our teams good ideas into reality.

So one of our values as a company is a good idea can come from anywhere.

And what we first do is create a sense of shared context.

So we want you to understand what our mission is.

Make every purchase rewarding.

We want you to understand what our strategy is, what our metrics are.

And then once you understand that, we want you to boldly suggest ideas, and know that we'll run with the best ideas, even if they're not my ideas, and very often they're not my ideas.

As the founder, we want to create a space where you can tease out those ideas and where we can teach you how to present that as a business case.

And the more unconventional, the better.

Because if it's a conventiona idea, it's already being done.

If it's unconventional we want to teach you to look for the merit in those possible breakthrough ideas and not, just sort of scuttle the right at the outset by saying, oh, that's already been tried or that will never work, because so we create spaces that are designed to be those collaboration zones so that people can whiteboard idea or they can riff back and forth.

And we want that to be a place where they can spark off of each other.

There's a term, called accidental collaboration.

Have you seen some accidental collaboratio in the in the environment here?

Yeah.

I think a funn story is actually, we were just in our little huddle space and chatting about, you know, what's the next big thing that we can d for Thanksgiving, for example?

And it turned into, like, an impromptu brainstorm where we just started thinking of new, you know, messaging and creative approaches, and we actually kind of joked around and threw it on the calendar retroactively and said, oh, that was a brainstorm when it was reall just a talking next door desk.

I think when we ar in those collaboration moments in, in person, it it's allowed me to think more strategically about marketin and working more in that space and push me to think a little bit differently.

So now I think that's kind o developed where I want to be and how I want to grow my career, and it's through those conversations and opportunities that have allowed me to think more strategically.

We are increasing our space by 20% at a time that a lot of a lot of companies are kind o going in the opposite direction.

And part of that was to say we want to create a space where people are going to come together.

We want to create a space for both our folks here who are hybrid, who work in the office three days a week, can have remote interactions that are productive and, creative and inspiring wit their fully remote colleagues.

And we want a place for our fully remote colleagues want to come into the office.

So whether that's you know, they come in occasionally, because they live within commuting distance or whether that's because they fly in and spend a week here working with their peers, we wanted it to be an exciting place that drew them kind of into the center and the hub of who we are as an organization.

How have you taken the space?

And also kind of elevated your mentoring, structure and programs at a border.

So my background is in organizational, improvement and learning and development.

So mentorship i really important to me as well.

And so I think there's tw things from the physical space.

It was really important that we create spaces where people feel comfortable having conversations.

And I think that's at the cor of what good mentorship is, is you have to be in a in a relationship where you trust the person, and the physical space can aid in that.

So a lot of what we've built here is, of course, formal conference rooms, boardrooms, you know, places where you can take private phone calls.

But it was equally important that we create what we call breakaway spaces, kind of soft seating corners where you can kind of be more casual, almost, you know, recreating a coffee shop feel, where you might go and have that conversatio with that mentor about whatever that problem is that you're working on or whatever that wisdom is that you're kind of looking to impart in that next generation of leaders who you might be mentoring.

So, it's reflected in our space.

And then as an organization we invest heavily in mentorship.

So we have mentorship program that we run.

We have, different employee resource groups who are engaged in mentoring.

And, you know, one of the things that we really did when we designed the space was go to our employees and kind of ask them what what are they hoping to get out of it.

And so we hope that, you know, bringing people in, whether it's long term mentoring, relationships, people that they've been mentoring with for a while or, you know, just just the opportunity to run into somebody at our at our water cooler, which we now actually have that people.

I see people there over the last three mornings.

I've seen people there every morning kind of filling up and talking.

And, it reminds me that that's that engagement, that interaction, that person to person communication is really healthy.

I think from a mental health standpoint, you want to feel connected to your team and to the mission of what you're doing.

And so if if you're just a box on the screen with your colleagues and they're just a box on the screen, your investment in them as a person, as a friend as a mentor is just different.

Doesn't mean it's not valuable.

But over the long run, we believe strongly that getting people together physically is critical to creating a a culture that cares about each other.

And there are different forms of mentorship that can't happen online.

So one of the things that happens a lot with young people in their career is they they kind of are working on something and they're not sure they're doing it right.

And they kind of swivel around their chair and they say to their colleague or mentor, could you come look at this?

Am I thinking about this the right way?

Some people call this the is there anything in my teeth for a mentorship?

Right?

Like could you just quickly give me a gut check on this?

You're not going to set up a zoom call just to walk through that, because it occurred to you and you want to keep moving on your project.

I've read several studies that have said, if you just have one friend at work, it it, changes your, point of view on your job and your job satisfaction.

Talk a little bit about wha it's doing for your teammates.

Mental health.

Yeah, I think maybe I've read a similar, a similar study.

And I do think it's it's really important, I think, to think about the fact that as humans, we are social creatures, even even the most.

You know, I'll use the term introverted of us, of which I actually count myself in that group.

You know, we still need that human connection.

And a lot of that can certainly be met through digital tools.

And so I think that that we bridged a lot of those gaps.

But there is really no substitute for kin of the full human interactions.

Yeah, that that is a good point, because one of the things I love about being with people is that collaboration, the magic that happens between humans that you can't recreate on a virtual call.

But the need for, being able to do deep work.

So that's kind of interesting to be able to do it here.

Some are there some architectural and space things that you did specifically for that purpose?

Yeah.

So the most important thin that we did and that, our design company worked with us on is really making sur that we have soundproof spaces.

So we have a couple of different ways, that we're controlling the sound.

One is just through, enhance doors and walls and, and making sure that there are the physical barriers that hold sound in, the other piece is, just creating enough space for people to kind of hop into a phone booth and close the door and sort of shut out the world, behind them so that they can do that deep work.

I can see all over the integration of technology to actually help humans collaborate.

Can you talk to me a little bit about you, what you've done with technology to help that collaboration?

Yeah.

So we really trie to take a look at the old office and coming into the new office here at 16 market and say what works and what do people actually need when they're integrating with tech?

And so the, the biggest pain point that we always want to tr to solve for is the ease of use.

Every single use wants the technology to be able to not be a barrier to their workspace, but to actually, propel them forward.

And so we really looked at how can we integrate our technologies in a way that empowers the user to be functional faster?

So we really looked for ways that the conference rooms would be, something as simple as the schedulers on the outside of every conference room.

So at a quick glance, you can see, hey, this room is availabl or somebody is working in there, you don't have to press your face against the glass to go, oh, I probably shouldn't walk out of that conference room.

Yeah Look, people work differently.

And so some people need to block out time even while they're in the office where they don't have meetings.

And you can do the deep work here from your office.

Some people need quiet spaces in the office where they're not going to be constantly interrupted so they can write the code they need to write.

We need to respect that that needs to exis within the office environment.

And some people want to have a day where they can get caught up on everything for 3 or 4 hours on a Friday afternoon and not have to be pulled into meetings.

And so should we have a moratorium on meetings in the summe after a certain period of time?

There's a lot of different creative ways to think about accommodating how folks want to work.

I have one more question on the idea of coming back to the office that every leader I hear talk about, which is, there is a pushback in many organizations because, teammates might feel like it's a, it's a control thing rather than a collaboration thing.

How do you work that into your cultur so people don't feel like it's, I gotta do this as I get to do it?

I mean, I think if we told people before the pandemic we were going to give you the opportunity to to stay at home geographically, you know, for a significant portion of the week that they think we are the most progressive, controlling organization of all time.

Now the norms shift and they're shifting back.

And so what control is, is relative to what your expectations are when you take a job.

We're very clear with people.

This is how we wor before they sign up to work here and there or signing on to to that way of collaborating.

And I thin you get the best of both worlds.

And I think the kinds of people that want to come work here can't wait to get into the office and collaborate.

They don't view that as a negative or they wouldn't sign up to work here.

There are plenty of fully remote companies out there you can choose to work for.

We're not one of them.

We've always focused o how do we reduce the friction, how do we make the space easy to use?

And then how do we make the moments meaningful so that people who are here are doing things that they couldn't be doing if they were working from home and they were in a remote environment?

We have this lovely collaborative process where we ask employees to nominate, famous people, who embody our values, and they have to tell us why they embody the values.

And then we go through a process of review.

And so you'll find a lot of ou conference rooms are named for, yogic, which is the room that, that we're in.

And then we also have, a conference room named for, our training room is named for Ernest Shackleton and our, our we have a several conference rooms tha are named for poets and artists.

And we really feel that the naming process is something that reflects who we are and also reflects who we aspire to be.

And they are the folks that if they were, if they were working for us in Hobart, we would know what values they represent personally.

What's your favorite?

My favorite is we named a room after, Fred Rogers.

And so that was that was on that I was very, excited to see.

And up on the list, I did not nominate, Mister Rogers, bu we were excited to have a room, that we were able to name for him.

Brian thank you so much for spending time with us just today.

And, this is a beautiful space, and I, look forward to coming back.

Thanks for having me.

I thought story is a part of Denver Story.

It's a company that is growing in the heart of the city, investing in people and design spaces that bring ideas to life.

It's a reminder that the future of work isn' just about where we do our jobs, but rather how we stay connected while we're doing them.

Next, we're suiting up with a family business that's been helping Denver look its best for 50 years.

Ted's clothiers has been a staple for style and service since 1975.

Ted's is known for hand tailored suits, personalized customer service and a dedication to hard work.

In honor of their 50t anniversary, I sat down with Ted and his son, Chris, to hear about their history and how they've stood the test of time.

I hope you enjoy everything we're here.

We are a staple of Inglewood.

We've been here for 50 years.

Yeah.

See this?

We would just shorten the sleeves and then just take this hand.

Yeah.

I never used a tape.

I never my salesmen use a tape and stuff, but I used a tape some so long, so many years.

And as soon customer walked i I say, no, you belong to the big and tall size or you belong I yeah, I know what size it.

Well, you walk in here, someone's there to greet you, with a friendly voice.

And they listen to you and they're here to help.

To have a smile on the customer's face is a reward in its own.

And, we maintain to try to keep that, people, they trust you.

Fine.

See, I put the ties away.

This the people they put.

And I got to that Iraq.

And I found the perfect tie for the outfit.

And the customer say oh, my gosh, this is that's it.

So you feel that?

Yes.

Yeah.

People, come in word of mouth.

We're looking for a product, but they find us and they're happy that they found us here.

People that care about, you know, what we have around.

If it's the clothing, if it's family, if it's themselves trying to help them.

That's how Ted was.

He?

He treated me like I was his best friend on the very first day I met him.

And it hasn't changed since.

Do you think we can cut this, shrink this lapel down to fit here?

We don't charge extra for tailoring.

You come in, you buy the suit.

We make it perfect for your party.

No extra tailoring.

The tailor shop really is our backbone of the business.

Without providing that expertise, craftsmanship to mold the final product, we wouldn't be any better than other big box corporate stores or places like that.

I hire Maria, 40, 46 years ago, and she's still here.

I mean, we had good help.

I start from nothing, but I manage.

I met my wife in, Greece.

In Athens, 72.

Yeah.

That's me and Angie.

Before we had family.

And, I was a police officer.

I make a decision, and I went to, American Embassy.

I took my paperwork and I arrived in Denver in June.

73, Father's Day.

The second day arrived in Denver.

I started working at two, first years.

I work, very hard.

I walked all the way down to Broadway to catch the bus, and come, Broadway and Girard.

It used to have a small clothing store and whatever he sells during the week, I come down Saturdays and I go out to Stanley, where that one morning he said that I'm retired.

I want to sell you the business.

And I say, can, I don't have a lot of money.

I have only $50,000 in savings in my account.

And you say to me what you have, and then you pay me when you can.

No paper to sign or anything.

Yeah, and that's how I started.

I came here with a dream.

Yes, Dawn.

My own business someday.

To own my own couch.

Okay.

And if you work hard here in the States, you can have everything.

No problem.

So being able to see what, he's done, right, coming as an immigrant with nothing and, being able to provide for all of us.

My brothers, sisters, his wife, or, you know, we had we had a roof under our home.

We had food on our plate.

We had clothes on our back.

All those things, it's something that I look up to, right?

And, if I can, you know, show that way to my kids, then I've done it.

The other one's got a little bit of, wool and cashmere touch to it, too.

So this is also very soft.

They come for miles around just to see Ted, and you can try to see if you like that idea.

Otherwise, you know, I like the bamboo on you.

It's got the same idea here.

It's got that little teal in there, which is a great color for the season.

And now Chris is right, has learned at Ted's ankles for all those years.

And and Chris is just as good.

What you wan to, appear is, you want to be, happ place that people want to come in, see you to, give back and those those, you know, levels of happiness or feelings of happiness.

It's rewarding that you can share it with the customers.

You can share it with, employees.

You can share it with, you know, the world.

You can you know, you can.

They mean a lot.

They mean a lot.

And hopefully it's, you know, reciprocated.

Yeah.

I' very fortunate.

I'm very lucky.

Okay.

My son came to the business almost 20 years ago.

He used to play basketball up at Chadron State, Nebraska.

And he got injured, at th beginning of, the third season.

And they put him in, ag reserve and he say, he called me up.

He said, daddy, I don't want to stay up here anymore.

I'm not going to be an NBA player.

I want to come down.

I drove up there, I brought him down.

He came down.

He say, can I work at your store?

Part time.

And then I'll go down to Metro to finish my college.

I say, sure, either realization of the percentage of people really goin and playing professional sports, is very little, which in turn brought me back here and finished up, college, finished up school and brought me back to working part time, going to school for the other part time, and then working full time here.

He came to the store.

He loved it.

He finished college dow the metro, you know, business.

And, then the time came.

He purchased a busines and the rest of the store, it's that's it.

Here's a big question.

Yeah.

You got a lot of lessons because you've been around this man for a long time.

What's one of the biggest lessons that he, humbleness.

My wife, she tries to get me to not work as hard and work smarter, and I totally understand and I don't know any different.

You know, I've been trained by machine himself.

If anybody knows what he's going through.

And to be able to look around and say, hey, this is the frui of what you've built, it's us.

And for every one of me, there's other people around in the state, in the country that have had that same success story, both me and my wife, we still working.

We still have a payroll chec a couple weeks, a couple weeks.

But we're very fortunate because to the grandkids people, they're still they still need clothes.

People are still dressing up.

People are still getting married.

And so we're excited to be able to service and continuing to service those for three generations, for generations.

And o if I can provide that for either my kids or my nieces and nephews to continue that, lineage, to be here for the next 50 years plus, we've done our job as long I can move, as long I can think I can.

Okay, I'll be around.

Nobody's not going to forge who Ted was, who Chris was in.

We would alway maybe have that going forward.

And we can only hope to keep that generational store or what?

What it may be to continue in the next.

Like I said, 50 years.

You know what a story, a testament to fortitude, hard work, and a deep commitment to family and community.

Now we're taking a deeper look into the role artificial intelligence is playing in our classrooms across our state.

I interviewed three Colorado superintendents from Canyon City, Durango, and Estes Park to learn how these school districts are using AI and discuss what the future holds.

Here you go.

So tell m about how your early background, kind of drove yo to where you are in education.

It's my first year teaching.

It's 30 years ag this year, 30 school years ago.

And at the end of the day, I found myself outside of the school complaining about a student to the principal, and I was complaining about his, his, his lack of education.

I was complaining about behavior.

I know tha I complained about his parents.

I complained about all these things.

And then the principal was patient, and he just let me do that.

And then he seems Dave and Dave said, you know what, Adam?

Those people sent the bes they've got to our school today.

And it was one of the most important moments for like, my whole career, because it really changed my thinking around what I can control and the wa that I approach the work and how I want to be around positivity and ownership in the work.

So I just think of me now, all these years later, my my journey is a little unusual.

I was never a building principal.

I found myself as a superintendent and, I' thankful for that opportunity.

But I'm very serious that when we do work, that we're thinking about all kids and we're not making excuses, and there are no exceptions to the work.

So that's that's a cool question.

It's very interesting to that.

You've had ten years as a science teacher or so.

Right.

What does, that experience do as you look at, using AI in education, I'm so excited that the being part of this cohort, we've focused on teacher training and equipping teacher with the tools that they need.

And starting there, I believe, is the right way to go.

Seeing the challenge that teachers have in the field of education, year after year after year, we've been asking teachers to do more and we're not taking anything off their plate.

And so starting myself i teaching five different preps, five different subjects, having to plan for five different disciplines every day that a lot, and focusing on supporting those teachers so that they can support the students.

I believe is the right direction.

And so what excites me is what I'm seeing about this is that the teachers are moving from fear of AI to curiosity.

I do believe we can harness AI to really power up and fuel the work that we kno is most critical for students, so we can use it to personalize, to differentiate, to provide opportunitie and project plans for students.

We can use it to help our leaders, our teachers, meet, be more productive.

We can also use it to bette communicate with our families, to better bring people together.

So that's my hope that it while it will be a critical tool, it will not be the driver and that we can bring more humanness and connection to our schools.

I'm excite about a lot of things with AI, so we did not blink.

I mean, we saw we started learning that there were going to be some opportunities with AI.

We are not a distric that decided that we were going to do any sort of policymaking around the restriction of its use or otherwise, but we did decide, hey, we might really benefi from being part of a pilot group who's thinking about a statement like making a statement not only to our community, but also to our students and our teachers to help them understand kin of our position with the work.

How do we make this a reality for all?

So now I'm thinking about the very specific things in the classroom and how you might be able to support students.

They were talking abou translation skills specifically.

Well, there's a real beauty around the idea that we're able to use AI now to provide things such as translation skills.

We have a really high number of multilingual students in our school, in particular, and it's growing where we don't have very many educators that are bilingual.

We have about 30% of our population that is Spanish speaking in the home.

And and that's the language that they're most fluent in.

But very few of our teachers speak Spanish.

So the quick abilit to translate for those students, it keeps them engaged and involve in belonging to the classroom, wher before they may have disengaged because they didn't understand the language that was being exchanged in the classroom, which delayed and gave them pause.

And so now, immediately they're able to engage and interact with the teacher and the other students and feel like they're part o the classroom and they belong.

So it's increasing accessibility for many of our students, our multilingual learners our students with disabilities.

Can you tell me a little bit about what excites you what what the possibilities are?

So I've really embraced technology my entire career, whether it was working with teachers, oh gosh, in the 90s on Hyper Studio, to actually teaching courses and information science for the University of Kentucky, to starting robotics teams an every district that I've been at and being a coach and for robotics myself.

And I'm passionate about growing makerspaces for kids and making sure they have maker tech.

So AI is just a natura extension of that, making sure that every single student has opportunity and access.

You know, we know that many times if girls aren't excited about Stem and tech, AI, those different kinds of tools, robotics by fourth grade, they won't go into it.

They won't go into thos high pay, high growth careers.

And that excited, especially also students from other underrepresented populations.

If they don't feel confident, if they don't feel enthusiastic about it, then we are taking away those entire career opportunities from them.

So I do feel passionate abou making sure all of our students have that access, have that education, that it's embedded in everything we do, that we help them to create, to dream, to operationalize, to code.

So that really when we'r talking about AI at this point, this is maybe not so much the newest but probably the most critical set of tools and strategies that we can provide our kids are there are some misconceptions that are out there that you've had to overcome on integrating AI into the classroom.

Yeah, yeah there are some misconceptions.

I think that, when I started getting a lot of attention inside of the field of education, there was concern right away around concepts of cheating.

And and I don't think tha there's something that is wrong, that people would start to as questions around authenticity.

And who wrote this?

And I'll speak to that because there is a fear that as as a leader, I do have a fear around that.

But one of the misconceptions I think, that people are thinking is, is that we've somehow just kind of taken our hands off of the reins and that now it's just a very much a wild, wild West kind of situation where we're not providing guidance and that there aren't safeguards in place and that all students are cheating and that teachers are no longer.

That's not true.

And again, that's kind of what's been excited about exciting, about coming toward this as what's our statement of belief?

What are our intended outcomes for our kids, their familie and our people, our own people, that we can provide a framework around that, that now we know actually how we're going to support people to understand those parameters are expected outcomes and otherwise, so that it's not just all over the place.

And so I think there i a misconception that is cheating it.

Yes, students might be using sort of AI to scaffold their learning to create that beginning sort of outline or draft, and they may overuse it, but it's really incumbent upon us as educators to then look for other ways for them to demonstrate their learning misconceptions that I noticed amongst staff and parents was, I think the immediate one was this will replace teachers in the classroom, which I don't believe will ever be true.

I mean, we, we we can't.

Teachers are the experts.

I is not the expert.

It's a tool.

But the teacher uses all the tools available to them, including AI to best design for learning.

Teachers are designers.

They're the creative mind.

And that can't be replaced.

So them being the experts, knowing what it is students need to know and be able to do, they now have another tool at their fingertips to make choices and decision for how students are best going to engage with that learning target in the classroom.

And it may be I it may not.

I think another misconception right off the bat was that all of our all of our classroom need to be super high tech.

Now, there is there's a place for high tech classrooms.

There's a place for analog spaces where students can learn to be creative and have hands on experience and engage in that real, authentic human connection in relationship and social emotional learning, which is so important when we do it well.

We have all of those spaces, and we choose what the space looks like based on what it is that we want students to know and be able to do what that learning target is.

And I really gives us powerful tools to maximize that design for our instruction in the classroom.

So, one of the huge misconceptions is that it will never replace teachers.

And the first articl started going in the newspaper a couple of years ago that, oh the school district's using AI.

Yeah, we got we got some pushback, people saying, oh my gosh, you are, you're doing something damaging and harmful to our students.

How do you have the expertise to be able to do this?

And we quickly responded, we put out guidelines from the very beginning.

We have a tech scope in sequence.

So it's very clear what students are using and learning at every grade level and what they're not.

Right.

We're not we're making sure they're not using tools that, they are not in an age to use.

And so it's that constant communication.

It's when we're in those meetings and building those relationships, whether it's at rotary or a chamber meeting, that we're bringing this up that we're answering questions.

And I think that's what's helped us be successful is always point to the why.

Always make sure our community knows that we're preparing our students for the future, the future.

We're not sure about, and that AI is an important tool in making sure every one of our students have obtained access for.

That's one of the biggest fears.

This is going to replace learning that, you know, it's it's going to circumvent learning for kids.

Kids are going to be using these tools now.

They won't be doing the critical thinking.

They won't be engaging at a high level and doing the learning.

I will do the learning for them.

So we are really we were really, intentional in our training to teach our staff how to use these tools not to circumvent learning or replace learning, but to use these tools to enhance learning and opportunities for students so that they were still the creative thinkers, the collaborators in the classroom, the critical thinkers in the classroom, rathe than having AI replace learning.

And so that's something we should continue to be cautious about.

And it and it's one of the challenge with it is being able to use it for learning instead of circumventing it.

And learning i one of the most beautiful things that we get to do, just as humans is to explore and learn new things and authentic, high quality learning comes through sometimes, sorry, sometimes comes through a little bit of productive struggle.

We want our students and ourselves as learners to have to go through a little bit of struggle, because repeating easy things over and over and over ultimately doesn't grow any of us.

And one of the misconceptions I think, is that AI inherently is going to reduce the productive struggle to the point where there's no learning going on.

When you look at, years out, let's say five years out, where do you see AI being implemented in education?

I think it will be an integrated part of every single classroom, and it will just be part of the daily life of teaching with these tools.

It is exciting to think about where it might be in five years, considering how quickly it's developed.

Now we're already seeing it embedded in curriculum that's out there.

We're seeing it used i our daily lives, so rather than avoid it or run from it we need to learn more about it.

And our focus as a teaching staff will be on teaching students how to be responsible users of IT, ethical users of IT how to identify bias within our AI platforms and tools, and be conscious consumers.

Four years ago, no one was talking about AI, at least not in my space.

Three years ago next month, I was at a conference and they were like, go to this website and you'll find example of right?

Two years ago, our classrooms had been impacted.

We're jumping in with this pile of work.

We are in a markedly different place now than we were even then.

There are districts who attempted to write policy around this an later were like, you know what?

The speed at which this is chang So to ask about fiv years is something that I just I almost can't comprehen how much different that'll be.

Our best hope for our graduates is that they will be lifelong learners for the res of their life into the future.

It's about loving, learning, enjoying learning.

And, you have to.

That happens through authentic school, through authentic spaces in the classroom, which is what our teachers create as the designers of those environments.

Learning for life.

For us as the school district, the people who represent Canyon City Schools, I want us to be engaged and thinking about learning and continuing to learn and revisit our practices and get better at what we do, and to keep doing that forever.

We're learning for life.

We have the alpha generation in our schools right now, and these are students who, yeah, they've grown up with tech.

They've, you know, they have grit, they have perseverance, and they've also grown up with some, you know, pretty big world problems.

And they're sort of saying, hey, adults, you didn't fix this so I'm going to have to do it.

And so they want to make an impact.

They want to solve problems.

And in order to do that, problems we've never seen before.

Right.

We had the pandemic, we have divisiveness.

We have the climate crises.

Our students are going to have to solve that.

And the skills are going to need are not necessarily the skills that you might have been able to find in a dictionary encyclopedia in the past.

They are those skills like creative problem solving and agile thinking and resilient risk taking.

That's what's going to solve the world problems.

And that's what our students tod To lear more, you can visit the Colorado Educatio Initiative website, shown here.

Colorado Startup Week celebrates the people who are turning their passions and ideas into possibilities, and that's an apt description of chef and entrepreneur Mary Wynn of All in French.

She left a career in finance to follow her heart into hospitality, building Olive and Finch into one of Denver' most beloved restaurant brands.

I sat down with Mary to talk about her journe from Wall Street to Main Street, and the lessons she's learned along the way.

Thank you for joining us today.

It's exciting to be here at Colorado Startup Week.

Tell us a little bit about your business.

I am a huge fan of Olive and French, but there's more.

I'm only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

There's a lot of depth under there.

So tell me a little bit about it.

There is.

So, you know, we started our first location of invention 2013, and I had other restaurants at the time and they were, you know, fine dining and full service.

And so I decided to open up a restaurant next to my pick, my parallel 17 at the time.

So I had parallel 17 on 17t Avenue, and I decided to open up all of their.

And it was I wanted it to be a restaurant that served breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I didn't want anything on the menu to be more than $13 because I wanted it to be affordable, but I still wanted to be chef driven and scratch made.

And so everything in the back of house that we do, everything in the kitchen is made from scratch.

It was really important for m to be able to have accessible, healthy and affordable food, but in an environment that was accessible, right?

So you come in, you order from the counte or you order from the QR code, and then we bring the food out to you.

But everything in the back of house is made as if it was a fine dining restaurant.

So, you know, 2013 we opened Olive and Finch and nobody understood what we were trying to do.

They thought we were trying t open up a fast food restaurant because you order from the counter.

And back in 2013, all of them finished.

I mean, just the concept, the format was unheard of.

And so, you know, we opened up December 3rd, 2013 to a line out the door.

And the next year, 2014, we were awarded Best New Restaurant by 50 to 80, by the Westword and by Zagat.

And that was the first time that any casual counter style restaurant had not just even won, but have been nominated, you know, since 2013.

Our early days, we've opened no for all of in Finch locations.

We've opened also a little Finch I like to call it all of them.

Finch's little sister.

It's our cafe all day, that focuses on pastries an breakfast items in the morning, but then cocktails at night.

But we also have a wholesale company, so it's a it's a company that serves institutional clients.

We make grab and go meals, pastries, cold pressed juices.

And we sell that to hospitals, hotels, grocery stores.

And we have a lot of different accounts at the airport.

And that actually is the biggest part of our business.

It's 60% of our sales, is our wholesale business.

You know, in recent weeks I've had several conversations that have talked about short supply chains.

So I'm assumin that you also are buying local.

We are we're buying local.

And I think, you know, we're at a point now where we have we have economies of scale, as you mentioned.

So, you know, we have really great buying power.

And because of that, we are abl to buy at really great prices.

But because we have this wholesale company we also control the production and the distribution of our products.

And I think that that's a part of our secret sauce.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

So let's step back a bit, a little bit, because you have not been a restaurateur your entire career.

So you started out in finance and working in commodities and kind of in a corporate environment.

Right?

Very.

Yeah.

So what was this?

Was this a brewing passion of yours?

And what was the tipping poin that made you say, I'm doing it?

Well, you know, I would say first, leaving finance was the scariest, thing I've ever done, but als the best thing I've ever done.

You know, my background's.

I'm a I'm a first generation Vietnamese-American.

My parents came here a refugees, at the fall of Saigon.

So they came here with literally nothing but the clothes on their backs.

And they had four kids, an my grandmother came with them.

And, you know, they came here to pretty much give us a better life, you know?

And I think that is really something that's true.

That stuck with me.

And it helps me work harder than I normally I think anybody would normally work, because of the sacrifices they've made.

But because of that, I thin that, you know, in my early days when I was working as an investment banker and then as a commodities trader, while it was really financially fulfilling, and it was something that my parents were really proud of, it I didn't find the connection.

And now, in retrospect you know, 20 some years later, I think about like, okay, well, what has driven me to hospitality, you know and I think about those moments when I was young, you know and I would never see my parents becaus they were working all the time.

But when I did see them, you know, maybe it was a once a week and we would have dinner together as a family, all of us together.

And that connection and that those times where you're enjoying a meal like that really was something that stuck with me.

And so as I was going through my career in finance, I was like, well, this is really great, but I'm missing something.

And, you know, the funny thing is, like, I didn't even start cooking until I starte cooking for myself in college.

You cannot.

Yeah.

And, so I decided in 2001 to leave finance because I wanted to learn how to cook and I wanted to open u a restaurant, and so I did that.

Are you so Olive and Finch, we found out that there's a lot more than what we see on the surface.

Yeah.

And you've scaled, but you scaled.

It looks like really in a organized and thoughtful manner.

And you're going to continue to scale.

So can you talk to me about, lessons in scaling and how you look at this?

So that you'r making good business decisions and yet you're not, stifled by fear of growing?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I, I think for me, scaling, especially in hospitality, is it's it's reall it has been one of the hardest, but also most eye openin parts of building my business.

I think people assume th challenge is replicating food.

But actually, that's the easy part.

You know, it's harder is really translating the heart of a single neighborhood location and being able to put it into completely different environments.

And, you know, I think, yo know, if you look at our cafe, Little Finch on 16th Stree or our location in Cherry Creek, or our location at Union Station or the arts complex, you know, I think that each space has its own rhythm and it has its own demands.

But the guest, you know, what's importan is that they feel the same way.

Right?

Because I think what hospitality is, is also community.

You know, lik we are a part of neighborhoods, we are a part of activating those neighborhoods.

And we do that by creating community.

And it's important for for you, Franny, to come in and to feel the same thing, whether it's in Union Station or the arts complex or Cherry Creek or Uptown.

And and I also thin that as I've been able to scale, you know, we opened our first location, 2013 is 2025.

We now have seven locations.

We have 300 employees.

We're about to open up, you know, five more locations within the next 18 months.

And the biggest lesson for me, being a founder of a of a small business was really making sure that I was building a team around me that I could trust to be able to do the things that I could do.

Because, you know, just because it's my business doesn't necessarily mean that I'm the best manager, right?

Or the best chef or the, you know, the best marketer, you know?

And so when you're scaling a business, you know, you have to remember, like what is your role?

You know?

And for me, I'm the founder.

And I think that I hav the vision of where we're going, and I have and I have to be able to make sure that I'm inspiring and motivating everyone around me so that we have the shared vision to be able to go after that goal.

All right.

So, when you if we look at, if we if you ran into somebody said, I want to start in the restaurant business.

Here's my concept.

Yeah.

What would you tell them?

What would you big piece of advice be about, jumping off on this?

Yeah, well, I'm.

Well, first, know your why and hold on to it, because it's not going to be easy like this industry.

It's going to test you, in way that you really can't imagine.

I think that you have to really understand what you're walking into because the hours are long and the margins are really razor thin.

And I think that, you know, people see busy restaurants or they see, you know, shows on T or they you see a Top chef or, you know, this or that and, and it's very glorified, right in what we do because you'r just throwing a party every day, you know, like, you know it's like having a great party at your house, right?

It's like, well, why can't I do this?

You know, every single day.

But it's a lot harde than just cooking and hosting.

You know, I think that if you're.

Why is just.

I want to own a restaurant.

I don't think that that's going to carry you through all the hard night, hard nights.

And, you know, I think tha if you're wise about something bigger, maybe it's sharin flavors that you grew up with.

Or maybe it's creating places for people to feel seen and to be seen, or to be a part of a community or to, provide something for the community.

Then I think that that will, that will really carry you when you want to give up.

Mary is great to sit down and talk to you today.

I really appreciated it.

And one of the things that was kind of an that you said really early was that you really created a market.

We had a, we had a vision of a counter ordering to be coupled with fast food and not so healthy.

Right.

And you overcame that.

And I have been to three of your restaurants, the one at DCP, the one in Cherry Creek, and the one on 17 each has a unique feel.

But what is, is, so, much that's consistent i that I've always felt welcome.

So I want to thank you for that.

Thank you.

That means a lot.

From her family's immigrant roots to her success story as a Colorado restaurant to Mar Wynn showed us that knowing your why can turn any challenge into a reason to keep going.

Mary's story is a perfect reminder that the heart of entrepreneurship isn't just about business, it's about drive and passion.

It's about building community and opening doors for others to follow.

Thank you so much for joining me this evening.

These stories are jus a few examples of great things that are happening across our state.

I look forward to bringing you many more stories in the coming weeks, but until then, I hope you're taking care of business.

And.

You.