Anna Stout

President of Council/Mayor - City of Grand Junction

Anna has lived in Grand Junction since 1989 and is a graduate of D51 schools and Colorado Mesa University. She a nonprofit executive, business owner, and public servant with almost 20 years of nonprofit and business experience. Anna is currently a candidate for Colorado's Third Congressional District.

Anna was elected to the Grand Junction City Council in 2019 and is currently serving in her second term as the President of Council/Mayor. She served as President pro tem/Mayor pro tem from 2021-2022.

Anna is the founder and president emeritus of the Foundation for Cultural Exchange, a local nonprofit founded in 2004 to facilitate Grand Junction's official sister city relationship in El Espino, El Salvador. She also organizes citizen exchange delegations to the country, including previously an annual spay/neuter brigade aimed at improving animal, human, environmental, and community health in the sister city community.

Anna Stout has served as the CEO of the Roice-Hurst Humane Society since 2015, during which time the organization has won multiple business and nonprofit awards. Under her leadership, Roice-Hurst launched the first-of-its-kind co-sheltering program for people experiencing homelessness with their pets, Homeward Hounds. It was also one of the first shelters nationwide to hire a human social worker and started the innovative Community Health Through Shelter Pets Initiative. In 2021, the organization opened a second location offering sheltering services in and around Delta, Colorado. Anna is a Certified Animal Welfare Administrator (CAWA), one of just over 200 people worldwide to hold that distinction.

Anna is a Certified Court Interpreter and ATA Certified Translator from Spanish to English and owns Transfinem Language and Cultural Services. She has worked extensively within the legal and medical fields and with Spanish-speaking populations throughout the state, including as an upper-division Spanish instructor at Colorado Mesa University and as an interpreter trainer throughout the Western Slope.

Anna has a Master's degree in Global Affairs with an emphasis on Organizational Leadership from the University of Denver and a Bachelor's in Spanish Literature and Language and Applied Professional Spanish with a minor in International Relations from Colorado Mesa University.

Anna is an alumna of the Colorado Governors Fellowship and a Gates Family Foundation Fellow of the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government Senior Executives in State and Local Government program.

Anna has served on many boards and commissions in Grand Junction and throughout the state. She currently sits on the Animal Welfare Association of Colorado board of directors, including as the co-chair of its Advocacy Committee, the Rocky Mountain Public Media board of directors, and the Colorado Municipal League Executive Board. She serves as the Council liaison to the Colorado Municipal League Policy Committee, Associated Governments of Northwest Colorado, and Visit Grand Junction. She formerly served on the Business Incubator Center board, the Mesa County Animal Services Advisory Board, the Grand Junction Downtown Development Authority board, the Grand Junction Commission on Arts and Culture board, the KAFM Community Advisory Board, and the Colorado Association of Professional Interpreters, among others.

Anna's passions are travel, writing, reading, hiking, her menagerie of pets (including the many neonatal foster kittens she cares for each year), and forging connections with others.