NFIB Colorado Announces New Leadership Council Chair

April 23, 2023

NFIB Colorado Announces New Leadership Council Chair

NFIB Colorado is excited to announce Diana Petrak as its new Leadership Council Chair. “In Diana Petrak, we have a chairperson who was already on the job of helping Colorado’s small businesses,” said Tony Gagliardi, Colorado state director for NFIB. “When so much is stacked against Main Street, mom-and-pop enterprises, legislatively and bureaucratically, we could not have found a better fighter.” Diana came to the Leadership Council with a background as a small business owner and employer in Lakewood, Colorado. She had owned two businesses in partnership with her mother, a full-service travel agency and a private occupational school. In 2018, she founded Colorado Policy Pathways to build bridges between the small-business community and the world of public policy and regulatory oversight. Her goal is to help define the unique challenges that small firms face daily, despite their very different contexts. Petrak and NFIB are no strangers to each other. In 2019, NFIB facilitated her appointment to a 13-member task force to study a paid family and medical leave program for Colorado as a result of Senate Bill19-188. That stakeholder process helped her understand the challenges and implications of competing interests, building consensus, and what that looks like in practice. She researches and analyzes the development of select policies like today’s new FAMLI program that broadly impact employers. She follows implementation by the administrations tasked with enforcing them in an environment of rapid regulatory growth. Her goal is to follow policy outcomes, the critical phase that often needs more attention. And she enjoys engaging with the small business community to understand successes or failures, even though most impacts are rarely easy to track or quantify. “I launched Colorado Policy Pathways in late 2018 to explore current public policy topics in Colorado that affect our economy, our small independent businesses, and our workforce,” said Petrak, “I believe it is critically important that we keep the space open to adapt to rapidly changing environments and respond to individuals in their unique contexts. Because my mission and goals closely align with NFIB’s, I believe there’s a natural fit and look forward to working with my small-business-owning colleagues on the council.” She can be reached by email at dpetrak@coloradopolicypathways.com. NFIB Leadership Council Members:

testify at legislative hearings involving small-business issues

host lawmakers for a tour of your business operations

be a quotable contact for the media

assist in implementing the political strategy for elections, including recruitment, endorsements, fundraising, and other grassroots efforts

help shape questions for the state ballot, the results from which are considered by lawmakers, state constitutional officers, and the bureaucracy to be the true voice of small business.