Joe Woodford

Woodford never intended to run the company started by his father in Des Moines, Iowa, just weeks before the 1929 stock market crash. He had spent two years with General Electric Co., working at the federal government’s plutonium production plant in southern Washington when he decided to return to Des Moines in 1964 to fill a vacant production manager position at Woodford Manufacturing . Three years later he was named executive vice president, a role that put him in charge of day-to-day operations of the company. Joe Woodford has been a tireless volunteer and financial supporter of many local nonprofits including Goodwill Industries, Leadership Pikes Peak, the Myron Stratton Home, Penrose-St. Francis Health Services, Pikes Peak United Way and Silver Key Senior Services. He started the Woodford Foundation in 1995 to promote freedom, liberty and self-reliance by making donations to conservative think tanks such as the Cato Institute, the Independence Institute and the Mountain States Legal Foundation. Through separate nonprofits, Woodford set up the Center for the Study of Government and the Individual at UCCS with political science professor Jim Null in 2000 to analyze the appropriate role of government, its limitations and restrictions; the Pikes Peak Economic Club with Paul Prentice in 2005 to promote economic and civic literacy; and the Limited Government Forum in 2007 to promote the ideas of individual responsibility. The forum sponsors Peak Freedom Festival, formerly called Limited Government Week, and periodic Food for Thought Luncheons.