DENVER — Longtime Denver business and civic leader James Mejia is taking on a new role as CEO of Denver Film following a lengthy national search by the city’s most prominent film nonprofit.
Mejia takes over an organization that runs the attention-grabbing Denver Film Festival each fall, operates the Sie FilmCenter on East Colfax Avenue and runs well-attended events such as the Film on the Rocks series at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Andrew Rodgers, the previous CEO for the organization, resigned in 2019, and festival director Britta Erickson has served as interim director since then.
Mejia has never worked in the film sector, but he’s had a varied career that has included stints as president/CEO of the Denver Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Denver Preschool Program and, for the past nine years, his own business and political consulting firm. Mejia has also been prominent in city government, having served as manager for the Denver Department of Parks and Recreation and deputy director of what was then the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade, and he finished third in the 2011 mayoral race in which current Mayor Michael Hancock ascended to that office.
It was that background that was not focused on the film sector that, in part, attracted members of the executive search committee to Mejia, several said in an announcement Tuesday.
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