Meet Your Newly Elected Board Members

Josh Olhava currently serves as the Planning & Development Supervisor with Ayres Associates. He has been working in both the public and private sectors for more than 15 years and has always valued the role planners play in shaping strong, thoughtful communities.

Outside of his professional work and volunteer involvement with APA Colorado, he enjoys spending time with his wife, twin daughters, and two dogs. Whether they’re running between school and sports or catching up with friends and family, they like to find adventure and enjoy new experiences both locally and beyond.

Josh has been involved with APA Colorado for over ten years. He started as a member of the Professional Development Committee, helping expand the range of sessions at our conferences and mentoring emerging professionals. He later served as Treasurer for five years, working closely with the board and staff to realign our budget, offer more member events, and strengthen the visibility of planners with elected officials.

Since beginning his term as Chapter President in 2025, he has worked with the board to update our Strategic Plan and restructure committees to better reflect member interests and needs. Over the next year, APA Colorado will be expanding educational opportunities through online platforms so members can share their knowledge and learn from one another. We’re also developing new training sessions and partnerships with organizations like the Colorado Municipal League, the Department of Local Affairs, and others in related fields. At the same time, we’re continuing to support Area Representatives and committees to strengthen local connections and overall chapter engagement.

Looking ahead, Josh wants to see these efforts reach more members across the state and continue refining how the Chapter supports planners in their work. He also wants to help build up the next group of Chapter leaders who will carry this work forward and ensure the Chapter remains responsive and relevant.

My name is Shelia Booth, and I'm your current VP of External Affairs for APA Colorado. First, thank you for allowing me to serve as your VP of External Affairs these last two years and I hope you'll support me in my mission to serve again and to finish the job I started. I look forward to continuing the good work that the Awards Committee and Outreach and Communications Committee have been doing. In addition, my goal is to further our Chapter's reach by making new and enhancing existing statewide connections with allied professional organizations like Downtown Colorado Inc., ULI Colorado, ASCE, ASLA, ITE, WTS, CCCMA and more. There are so many opportunities out there for us to share our knowledge of planning and build statewide support of best practices. 

Our region faces significant issues common to many rural and resort communities related to growth, affordability, and transportation, unique within Colorado—I believe planners play a critical role in supporting communities in navigating these pressures. My work has focused on bringing people together to comprehensively identify strategies to better the places we live, from developing comprehensive plans, leading public engagement processes, or building coalitions across jurisdictions. This includes:

• Promoting balanced approaches to growth that protect community character while expanding access to housing and economic opportunity.
• Advancing inclusive, multimodal transportation strategies that improve regional connectivity.
• Supporting diverse voices in planning and bringing rural planners together to share and learn from one another.

For my entire professional and academic careers, I have strived to create community, foster connection, and promote education and excellence.I am a timely person with a keen attention-to-detail and a love for going above and beyond in any task I complete. I bring a sense of enthusiam and energy to every project I take on, while still maintaining professional standards and a level-headed approach to any issue I may face. 

Supporting professional and state organizations has always been a passion of mine, even before I became a professional planner. I have served on various boards and committees before in both participatory and administrative roles. The first committee I served on was the Diversity Committee for the Pennsylvania Department of Education. During my undergraduate career, I served in administrative roles for nearly 3 years in organizations charged with education the student body and other organiations on diversity and equity in the workplace and classroom. During my graduate career, I served as the president of my program's Student Planning Association where I established, developed, and hosted two different speaker series (a luncheon and workshop series), both of which are still running today.

Currently, I serve on the national APA's Education Committee and work as a transportation and land use planner at a private firm here in the Denver metro. I have been waiting for a chance to become involved with the APA CO chapter, and just know that I will excel in this role! I have reviewed the duties and responsibilities of this role and forsee no issues with the time commitment for meetings or any hinderances in administering the 2 events per year. 

As a planning professional with 20 years of experience across city, county, and state levels, I understand the unique and complex challenges facing Northern Colorado—rapid growth, water scarcity, natural hazards, and a wide range of seemingly competing community values. These issues demand thoughtful, collaborative, and locally responsive solutions.

Now more than ever, planners in our region need spaces to connect, share ideas, and support one another in navigating shifting local, state, and federal policy landscapes. As Deputy Director of Community Development for the City of Greeley, I oversee long-range and current planning, engineering development review, building, landscape architecture, and civil inspections in one of the fastest growing municipalities in the country. I’ve seen firsthand the power of collaboration and the value of building relationships across sectors and experience levels.

Mentorships and apprenticeships are fundamental to preparing a new generation of planning professionals, and Northern Colorado could cultivate a more robust pathway to attract students and emerging planners into the area. At the same time, folks with a wealth of regional institutional knowledge have been retiring or approaching the end of their professional careers, and we can all learn from their perspectives. Developing a forum to share experience, knowledge and inspiration from our more seasoned planners would benefit us all. These ideas are not necessarily original, and I’m not uniquely qualified to shepherd them.

I’m running to serve as a facilitator and connector—someone who amplifies your voices, promotes mentorship and knowledge-sharing, and strengthens the planning community in Northern Colorado.

I’ve chosen to be a candidate because I’m at a point in my career where I can better commit time and effort to what I’d aim to be as a Board member: an effective facilitator acting as a hub and a champion for your ideas, to communicate those ideas to the Chapter, and to seek ways to implement better communication, collaboration, and comradery among a group of like-minded change agents facing similar issues and obstacles.

We face real challenges, and I believe we are truly Better Together.