Recent Graduate Achievement Award

Deborah Finestone (BA ’16, MS ’18) is a marketing analytics and insights leader with a passion for using data to tell compelling, meaningful, and impactful stories. She serves as Senior Manager of Analytics and Insights at Horizon Family Brands, where she leverages data and insights to drive strategic decision-making and contributes to company culture through leadership focused on employee recognition. Previously, she worked in analytics at Danone North America, supporting teams across multiple consumer brands and categories.  

A proud alumna of the University of Denver, Deborah earned a bachelor’s degree in Strategic Communications and a master’s degree in Marketing with an emphasis in marketing research. She has remained deeply engaged with DU through guest lecturing, mentoring students, and serving on the Daniels College of Business Alumni Advisory Board, where she chaired the Student Development Committee. She also established a scholarship at Daniels to expand access to education and support the next generation of marketing leaders.  

Deborah is an active leader in the Jewish community. She has been involved with JewishColorado for six years, serving on its Young Adult Division Executive Committee and contributing to initiatives focused on community engagement, strategy, and grant allocation. In 2025, she joined Jewish Federations of North America’s National Young Leadership Cabinet and currently serves on Cabinet’s Executive Committee as Vice Chair of Belonging, helping foster a community in which members feel welcome, valued, and connected.  

Originally from Pittsburgh and raised in Memphis, Deborah moved to Colorado to attend DU and has made Colorado home. Outside of work and community leadership, she enjoys traveling, skiing, crafting, cheering on Pittsburgh sports teams, and spending time with family, friends, and her labradoodle, Perry.  

Professional Achievement Award

As a corporate board director and business consultant, Ann Spector Lieff (BA '74) helped public companies and family-managed businesses achieve their strategic goals for almost 30 years. Additionally, with four decades of senior-level experience, Lieff brought finely-honed analytic skills and a deep understanding of corporate cultures to every engagement. During her tenure as a corporate director, she provided management guidance and oversight, assisting in two company sales and one merger.   

  Lieff enjoyed a successful music industry career where she gained extensive experience in multi-unit and specialty retailing including distribution, real estate, merchandising, operations, and marketing. As CEO for Spec’s Music in Miami, Florida, she was integral in taking the family business public. The company’s stock was traded on NASDAQ under the symbol SPEK. After going public, Spec’s expanded to over 80 stores in Florida and Puerto Rico. In 1998, the company merged with Camelot Music. Soon after, Camelot merged with Trans World Entertainment making Spec’s part of a 1,000-store chain at the time.   

 Throughout Lieff’s music business career, she served on the National Association of Recording Merchandisers board (now the Music Business Association) and became Chairwoman. While President and CEO of Spec’s Music, she was also invited to join the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), Women’s Executive Leadership (WEL Florida), and Committee of 200. Those organizations continue to provide longtime friendships and leadership skills from other CEOs, as well as a robust network that led to corporate board work for eight companies including Hastings Entertainment, Claire’s Stores, Birks & Mayors, and Herzfeld Caribbean Basin Fund, among others.  

 Over the course of her career, Lieff enjoyed advising in areas such as business practice, growth strategies, new business opportunities, and personnel. She was a frequent speaker at universities, trade associations, and various professional business organizations. In 1995, Lieff and her parents endowed the Spector-Lieff Scholarship Fund at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. Over the years she also mentored a wide array of executives, students, and female business owners. Since 2010, Lieff has been based out of the Vail Valley where she enjoys spending time outside with her grandson. She has been part of the Vail Women Elect group since 2018. In November 2025, she officially retired.  

Community Impact Award

Rhiannan Price (MA '12) is the Co-Founder of Common Space, a nonprofit building the world's first community-governed humanitarian satellite constellation to make high-resolution imagery openly accessible for humanitarian response, human rights documentation, climate resilience, and accountability.   

Last year, Common Space won the Kluz PeaceTech Prize, and Rhiannan won Unorthodox Philanthropy's Extraordinary Leader Award and became the Humanitarian Fellow-in-Residence at Taylor Geospatial. She's a recognized thought leader and has advocated for the use of satellites for societal impact at The Vatican, the United Nations, NASA Headquarters, Harvard and everywhere in between.   

 Before founding Common Space, Rhiannan built and led NASA Lifelines, a community of experts accelerating use of satellite imagery in humanitarian crises. She has served on NASA's Applied Sciences Advisory Committee for a decade, and she formerly served on the Technology Advisory Board for the International Criminal Court's Office of the Prosecutor. Previously, she oversaw the global humanitarian and sustainable development portfolio at Maxar Technologies, where she founded their Open Data Program and won their "Seeing a Better World" Award.   

 She holds an M.A. in International Human Rights from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and a B.A. from Xavier University. Her career in human rights began in Tanzania and Uganda, following her Peace Corps service in Dominica.   

Rhiannan lives in St. Louis, and is a widow and a solo parent to a young daughter, an experience she credits with sharpening her sense of urgency and intentionality, both at home and at work. Outside of Common Space, she hikes, plays racquetball, and reads widely - all while spending as much time with family and friends as possible. 

Award for Service to the University

Mark (BSBA '75) and Polly Lestikow have built their lives around family, entrepreneurship, community involvement, and a shared commitment to giving back.  

Following his graduation from the University of Denver, Mark began a career in sales and marketing, with experience in real estate franchising, the packaging industry, and audio publishing. Polly attended Colorado College before graduating from Colorado State University in 1975 and went on to a 20-year career as a dietitian.  

In 1992, Mark took the leap into entrepreneurship when he became a Closet Factory franchisee in Colorado. As the business grew, Polly joined him in 1998 and became the top sales producer in the Closet Factory franchise network. Today, together with their youngest son, Doug—a 2008 DU graduate with a BSBA in Finance and now CEO of Closet Factory Colorado—the family owns and operates a business with more than 100 employees serving clients throughout Colorado. Closet Factory Colorado is celebrating its 35th year in business.  

Mark and Polly have been married for 51 years and live in Centennial, Colorado. They raised three children—Greg, Dana, and Doug—all of whom are married and live in the Denver area. Their family now includes six grandchildren, three girls and three boys, ranging in age from six to 11. Spending time with their children and grandchildren remains one of their greatest joys.  

Athletics and the outdoors have always been an important part of their lives. Mark and Polly are avid cyclists, skiers and snowboarders, hikers, and swimmers and enjoy spending time at their home in East Vail. For Polly, athletics took on special significance later in life. Growing up before Title IX, she had few opportunities to participate in organized sports and did not discover until adulthood how much she loved athletics—and how capable an athlete she was.  

That experience inspired Polly to become a strong advocate for women’s athletics and was instrumental in deepening the Lestikows’ involvement with the University of Denver’s women’s sports programs. Mark and Polly established an endowed scholarship in 1999 supporting DU women’s athletics and recently made a major gift to the women’s gymnastics program. For Polly in particular, supporting today’s female student-athletes is a meaningful way to help provide opportunities that were largely unavailable to women of her generation.  

Giving back has been a longstanding priority for Mark and Polly. Over the years, they have supported a wide range of educational, youth, cultural, historical, housing, and outdoor organizations, including the University of Denver, the Bailey Program for Family Enterprise, Hope Ignites, SOS Outreach, History Colorado Museum, The National WWII Museum, HomeAid Colorado, Home Builders Foundation, Colorado Snowsports Museum, Longyear Foundation, Ignite Adaptive Sports, and The First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston.  

Their commitment extends well beyond financial support. Polly has served as Board Chair of Hope Ignites and has been active with the Home Builders Foundation and the American Society of Interior Designers. Mark currently serves on the Board of SOS Outreach, as President of the HeartCycle Bicycle Touring Club, and on the Gore Creek Meadows HOA Board in Vail. His longstanding involvement with the University of Denver includes serving as President of the National DU Alumni Association in 1984–85. In 2024, he received the DU Department of Marketing’s Lifetime Achievement Alumni Award.  

Throughout more than five decades together, Mark and Polly have shared a belief in working hard, building meaningful relationships, staying active and engaged, and giving back to the communities and organizations that have enriched their lives. They are deeply honored to receive the University of Denver’s 2026 Service to the University award.