Keynote Speaker

Brittany Pettersen ’06, U.S. Rep. for Colorado’s 7th Congressional District

Brittany Pettersen was born in Colorado and grew up in Jefferson County, which she is now proud to represent in Congress. She served in the Colorado legislature for a decade before being elected in 2022 to represent Colorado’s 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. She is the first woman to represent this district, which encompasses Jefferson, Broomfield, Lake, Park, Teller, Chaffee, Fremont and Custer counties. Pettersen is a member of the House Financial Services Committee, where she serves on the Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance and as the vice ranking member of the Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions.

Before coming to Congress, Pettersen helped pass legislation in Colorado to lower health care costs, address the opioid epidemic, protect reproductive health care and increase access to affordable childcare. She is now working to expand these policies nationwide. She also is leading the fight to improve the nation’s programs to treat mental health and substance-use disorders and crack down on drug trafficking after seeing firsthand the devastating impacts of opioids through her mother’s decades long struggle with addiction.

Through her position on the Financial Services Committee, Pettersen is working to increase consumer protections, improve housing affordability and accessibility, keep the U.S. at the cutting edge of technological advances and crack down on drug cartels and terrorist organizations that use financial institutions.

Pettersen faced many challenges as an at-risk youth, but access to great public schools and teachers who believed in her helped her become the first in her family to graduate from high school and college. She earned a bachelor’s degree at Metropolitan State University of Denver by waiting tables to put herself through school. Pettersen made the most of the opportunity to build a better life, and she has spent her career fighting to give every Coloradan that same chance.

Pettersen lives in Lakewood with her husband, Ian Silverii; their young son, Davis; and their rescue dog, Ollie.