RTD BOARD
Vote Kiel for Every Mile
District A: ELECTION DAY Nov 5
Why Kiel’s Running
Kiel Brunner is a data scientist, researcher, partner and dad, who is focused on ensuring RTD is a meaningful part of our climate future.
After electing climate action leaders, progressive champions and working with social equity, environmental, health, labor and transportation organizations to solve seemingly impossible problems, one of the hardest things he’s done was help his toddler use an inhaler and try to explain why they were having problems breathing.
Our air quality is terrible in Denver and inhalers help but it's not a long term solution for our climate future. By improving transit services in the Denver metro area and making it a consistent and comfortable choice, we can save people time, money and improve our health.
Priorities:
Safe, Reliable and Equitable
Hear from Kiel on Climate Action:
Meeting our climate goals, has to include a commitment to an efficient regional transportation system and accessible/walkable transit oriented communities.
“Having conducted the research, built coalitions and executed these goals for other western metro areas, I’m confident Denver and our surrounding communities can be better connected, with the right leadership.“
The Best Choice for Getting Around:
Given my experience working for other regional transit agencies, I believe we need to focus on improving ridership through rapid and reliable service with a comfortable experience.
Using data and best practices, we can make transit a safe, frequent, fast and convenient option for people moving around the metro area for all our daily activities and reduce traffic congestion.
WHAT is the regional transportation District (RTD)?
RTD provides the bus and train services for the Denver Metro Area. The District’s Board is made up of 15 members, representing 8 counties in the Front Range. Directors are elected to a staggered 4-year year term. Kiel is running for District A, which spans from Alamo Placita to Lowry and Colfax to I-25. It includes so many of Denver’s iconic places to visit, including fantastic parks, amazing venues to see live music, beautiful museums, libraries and some
of Denver’s world class restaurants. The Board’s mission is: ‘To meet our constituents' present and future public transit needs by offering safe, clean, reliable, courteous, accessible and cost-effective service throughout the District.’ It achieves its goals as a governance Board through policy-making and setting the strategic direction for the agency.
Meet Kiel
Kiel, rhymes with mile, grew up with transit, environmentalism and social equity as core values, with a great grandparents and grandparents who were surgeons for the railroad, Democratic politicians and wildlife conservationists, a father who ran an environmental manufacturing company and a mother with a background in social work.
Kiel was lucky enough to work for Governor Jared Polis‘ first campaign for Congress, where he met his future wife. After working in legislatures and several Democratic campaigns across the country, he found a passion in public opinion research, where he used data to solve seemingly impossible problems. He ran Senator Bernie Sanders presidential polling operation and helped several transit, equity and environmental organizations, dozens of labor unions and hundreds of progressive federal, state and local elected officials achieve their goals.
Working full time, Kiel earned a masters in Applied Data Science, upskilling to meet greater challenges. Early in the pandemic, he volunteered to help build a recruitment system for health care volunteers and later joined the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s Vaccine Equity team, where he analyzed vaccine uptake data and helped direct and design programs to encourage the equitable access to vaccines.
Kiel currently works at Deloitte in data science and cyber security, where he helps governments use data to make their processes more efficient, saving taxpayers money, while improving services. He has helped build machine learning applications to analyze and predict and alert risk in federal budgeting and accounting.
EXPERIENCE
- Senator Bernie Sanders Presidential campaigns: Kiel directed polling operations, gave data briefings and learned that being authentic and staying true to yourself and your morals are standards to live, campaign and govern.
- Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC): Focusing on voting rights and helping communities remove racist monuments. learned the importance of equity and the power of creating inviting public spaces for everyone to enjoy.
- Trout Unlimited: Kiel worked to protect one of the largest forests and carbon stores in North America, the Tongass National Forest, protecting old growth trees, endangered species and downstream effects of logging.
- ACLU: Focusing on education and criminal justice, Kiel worked to collaborate with schools Including and law enforcement to keep kids who rely on public transit for school out of the school-to-prison pipeline when their bus is late so many times they would have to go to court for truancy.
- Labor Experience: Kiel worked extensively with almost every major labor union across the country to help improve the lives of their members.
- Transit, Housing and Transit Oriented Community experience: Kiel worked with several coalitions (governments, labor, developers and non-profits) in multiple western states to research, build coalitions and execute campaigns for public, private and public/ private partnerships to build, improve and maintain transit infrastructure and housing and communities surrounding the stations.
- Ballot Measures: Since 2014, Kiel has helped conduct the research to turn complex problems into questions for voters to approve, including dozens of successful measures to fund transit, education, senior services and consumer protection.
- Defenders of Wildlife : Where he conducted extensive research on endangered species and the impact of losing critical wildlife to the ecological systems, used to inform Congressional action of wildlife matters.
Donate today to support Kiel for RTD Board District A
