Colin Lacy is a social entrepreneur that has led work at the intersection of STEM education, STEM ecosystem design, career pathways and rural workforce development for over 15 years.

He is the Founder & CEO of Homegrown Pathways and Co-Founder & CEO of MakerUSA (now Chief Innovation Officer). He has led in the design, launch and support of dozens of education ecosystems across the country, in partnership with cities, states and federal partners, including the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He is also a personal representative of homegrown rural leadership, as he grew up, graduated public high school and continues to raise a family in rural Colorado.

Lacy is the Founder of Homegrown Pathways, a rural Colorado based nonprofit that is actively developing a new AmeriCorps model designed to catalyze regional career pathways for young adults in rural Colorado. Homegrown Pathways is designing and piloting programming with school districts, workforce centers, business incubators, local businesses and post-secondary institutions. A federally-funded planning process via the Colorado Governor’s Office and Serve Colorado is underway in three regions across the Western Slope. Homegrown Pathways Inc serves as a contractor to the three planning grantees, which are the Mesa County Workforce Center, Colorado Northwestern Community College and Partners of Delta, Montrose & Ouray.

Lacy is also the Co-Founder of MakerUSA, a national nonprofit that partners with communities to build stronger career pathways into “maker industries,” in large part by building and strengthening local maker talent ecosystems. The organization actively supports a network that includes 35 leading community and technical colleges and community-based nonprofits in 20 states.

Previously, Lacy served as the Executive Director of Citizen Schools’ Makers + Mentors Network (formerly US2020) and had a founding leadership role in the initiative’s launch in partnership with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in 2013. During this time, he led a 30+ member team in the implementation of new models that more than doubled the scale of the initiative to support over 20 regional STEM ecosystems, serving over 200,000 underrepresented youth. This included creating multiple employee engagement programs with Fortune 500 companies, including Cisco, Amgen and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). It also included leading the design and implementation of a new AmeriCorps VISTA program called Maker Fellows. Maker Fellows successfully deployed 25+ service members in 10+ states in its first year of implementation, and continues to drive impact today. 

Lacy has extensive experience in fundraising and has formed funding relationships with diverse institutions from Fortune 500 firms, including Bank of America, Chevron and Arconic, to large private family foundations, including Schmidt Futures and the Siegel Family Endowment, as well as public funding partnerships, including the U.S. Department of Defense and AmeriCorps. He also maintains relationships with funders that have priorities specifically in career pathways in rural Colorado. Over the last two years, for the two nonprofits which he founded, he has independently raised over $1.5MIL in private and public funding.

Lacy has served in various rural leadership roles, including serving as a three-term president of the Ridgway Area Chamber of Commerce and led the strategic transformation of the chamber in alignment with the region’s new business challenges and opportunities. He has served as an elected school-board official as well as a founding board member of the Montrose Children’s Museum. Colin graduated from Ridgway High School (R-2). He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he graduated With Distinction, and received a Master in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Colin and his wife Michele are also rural small business owners. His wife is a pediatric dentist with a practice in Montrose, CO and their two children attend public school in Ridgway, CO.

He was recognized as one of 2022’s “Top 100 Entrepreneurs and Innovators” by Top 100 Magazine.