Meet a Member: Sandy Michel Nance

Affiliate presidents are valued leaders in our organization. One of our outstanding affiliate presidents is Sandy Michel Nance of Colorado. She is a long-time leader in her affiliate and another outstanding NFPW member. She is a dedicated professional and a fun person to be around. Meet another unique and unbelievable NFPW member.

Name:  Sandy Michel Nance

City and State:  Wheat Ridge, Colorado

Sandy Michel Nance

Affiliate and any leadership positions: Colorado Press Women, currently president. Was also president of CPW in 2004. Have also run contest and arranged programs.

Years a member of NFPW:  38 years

Tell us a little about you.

Journalism is where my heart is, but I only used my journalism degree for four wild years in Wyoming — at UPI and the Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune — before going to work in the corporate public relations office of Mountain Bell. I spent 25 years with that company (aka, US West when I left), working in employee communications, media relations, community/education relations and marketing before beginning a string of assignments as PR counsel on the staff of several vice presidents and one subsidiary president. I preached ethics and earning the trust of employees and communities. I also was the first elected president of Women in Management, a feminist networking organization recognized as a MB employee resource group that rapidly spread from Colorado to form chapters in all seven states — which some thought was why I didn’t get any more promotions.

After an involuntary early retirement, I earned a master’s degree and began teaching PR classes for adult students at Regis University for 10 years and for a short time at Metro State College. (Adjunct pay sucks!) Thanks to Press Women contacts, I got a part time job at American Water Works Association that eventually became full time as a managing editor-publications to members. I loved learning about the water industry, writing features and regulatory-legislative news.  I retired from there in 2011 to have brain surgery on a small benign tumor. I am pleased to have made a terrific recovery and am delighted to active in Press Women again.

My husband John and I enjoy keeping up with the kids and grandkids and took our first trip overseas last fall.

Any career advice you would give?

Ask for what you want. And don’t jump at the first salary offered. I learned that by accident when I switched to PR from journalism. The initial salary offered was 30% higher than I had been making and I was speechless. The guy took that as hesitancy and immediately hiked the offer another 6%.

Sandy Michel Nance

Which talent would you most like to have?

I’d love to be a blues & jazz singer. I mean, I can sing but not scat and am lousy at memorizing lyrics.

If you could live anywhere, where would it be?

I’m a native of this little western suburb of Denver and am quite happy here. However, I wouldn’t mind having a second home in the mountains. Telluride is my favorite.

What book are you reading?

Broad Influence: How Women Are Changing the Way America Works  by Jay Newton-Small  and Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin

What would people be surprised to learn about you?

You can also call me Commissioner because I’m on the Wheat Ridge Cultural Commission (along with Gay Porter DeNileon).

Why is your affiliate and NFPW important to you?

These are my peeps — my Press Women friends are the women who are most like me, and every new person I meet at an NFPW conference turns out to be the same.

Way to follow you on a website, twitter, Facebook, etc.

Facebook — Sandy Michel Nance. I also post occasionally on Colorado Press Women’s Facebook page.  I’m hoping to post more often on Twitter — @smnance  CPW just got a Twitter account:  @COPressWomen

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Meet a Member: Gay Porter DeNileon

Gay Porter DeNileon is a leader for both NFPW and the Colorado affiliate. She is a hard worker who comes up with great ideas on ways to do things better. It has been a pleasure having her as NFPW secretary. She is dependable and is willing to work behind the scenes and give others credit in an effort to make improvements. She is a respected communications professional.She is a leader and a great asset to NFPW. It is a pleasure to introduce my unique and unbelievable friend Gay.

Gay Porter DeNileon pauses near American Falls, Idaho following the NFPW conference in Idaho in 2008.

Name: Gay Porter DeNileon

City and State: Wheat Ridge, Colorado

Affiliate and any leadership positions:

Currently president of Colorado Press Women (also was president 2007 – 2009); former chair of the CPW Program Committee. Current Secretary of NFPW

Years a member of NFPW: 11. I really got involved in 2005 when CPW started planning the 2006 national convention in Denver, that was so much fun and I really learned to appreciate the CPW members, especially the two conference co-chairs Marilyn Saltzman and Ann Lockhart, and then president Judi Buehrer.

Tell us a little about you.

I’m one of those lucky J-School grads (University of Colorado) who has always had a communications job. My college internship with the CU Athletic Department led to a stint covering World Cup skiing and the Winter Olympics with a niche publication called Ski Racing, which led to numerous freelance articles for different publications, including Sports Illustrated and Frontier Inflight. I continued to work in the ski business as the public relations manager for Crested Butte Mountain Resort and as the press liaison for national championships and the Aspen Winternational. Then I was a reporter and editor for a Crested Butte weekly for several years — covering everything from the town council to the local sports to the society news. When I moved to Denver area in the early 90s, I like to say that “my snow melted” and I began to work for the water industry. I’ve worked for American Water Works for 22 years now, first as managing editor and reporter of the association newsletter, then on two other periodicals and more recently as senior manager of editorial development and production of books. Books are a different challenge than writing and editing articles, and I’ve learned a lot along the way.

Gay having dinner with her husband, Mike, and daughter, Hilary, on the beach in Punta Vista, Uruguay

Outside of work, I’ve been happily married to Mike DeNileon for 19 years; we have two granddaughters from his two sons and another grandchild on the way. My daughter, Hilary, is a graduate student at Cornell. (I went back to school a few years ago so I could get my master’s before she did and received my Masters in Public Administration in 2009 from the University of Colorado – Denver.) I love to ski, ride my road bike, garden (although Mike is the real farmer; we had a great harvest the last couple of years), water sports, cook, read, bead, travel, spend time with friends. After we go to Alaska for this year’s NFPW conference, I will have visited every state except four — and I’ll get to those within the next decade.

Any career advice you would give?

Ask questions. That’s what reporters do and why we are important. If you don’t understand something, chances are your readers won’t either, so ask for fuller explanations, do more research, and tell the whole story.

Also, everybody needs an editor, and being an editor can improve your own writing.

Which talent would you most like to have?

I’d love to be able to do improv comedy — and to be able to break dance. I’ll probably take tap dancing lessons when I retire.

If you could live anywhere, where would it be?

Gay sailing in Charleston Harbor on the NFPW post tour last year.

Well I grew up in Michigan, so I love the lakes, and I love the mountains of Colorado, so Lake Tahoe might be the perfect combination of both — if my family and friends were close!

What book are you reading?

I just finished The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd (loved it!) and am buzzing through The Children Act by Ian McEwan. And I’m listening to The Wishing Trees by John Shors in my car.  I belong to two book clubs and organize the community reading event for the Wheat Ridge Cultural Commission (I’m a second-term commissioner) so I’m always on the lookout for a good read.

What would people be surprised to learn about you?

I was the water industry go-to person on counterterrorism right after 9/11. My involvement in the issue began in 1999 when I became the AWWA staff liaison to a group of water utility executives addressing the industry’s response to Presidential Decision Directive 63, which addressed security and critical industry. In that role, I attended training at Argonne and Sandia National Laboratories and was part of a research advisory group developing a risk assessment methodology for water (and later taught the RAM-W method to water utilities). In May 2001 a peer-reviewed article I wrote on the water community’s counterterrorism efforts and the potential to be attacked was published in Journal AWWA. So four months later, I was the only person in our office tracking the issue when terrorist-driven planes took down the World Trade Center. As the national source for water information, AWWA was inundated with phone calls about how secure the drinking water supply was against terrorist attacks, and I fielded a lot of the calls, set up a web resource center for our members, and my article was widely cited in the media.

Another surprising fact is I directed five plays for the community theater in Crested Butte (and acted in an equal number) and if I had known it could be a career, I might have become a movie director. I’ve got a couple plays in me that I’m hoping to write when I retire.

Why is your affiliate and NFPW important to you?

The active members of my affiliate and the people I’ve met through NFPW are all extremely bright women with interesting ideas and experiences that bring a lot to a conversation or an event. They and the events they plan stimulate me and expand my horizons.

Way to follow you on a website, twitter, Facebook, etc. 

LinkedIn, Goodreads, and Pintrest