Global ambition: Karen Gerwitz brings Mile High perspective to international trade.

• Author: Sukin, Gigi
• Position: GOOD COMPANY

When you meet Karen Gerwitz at her office, it feels a little displaced. Temporarily housed inside the headquarters and manufacturing facility of Geotech Environmental Equipment in north Denver, the space strikes one as incongruous with the organization it houses--the World Trade Center Denver.

Gerwitz, president of the nonprofit, brings international experience from past roles that have included chief of protocol for the Colorado International Trade Office, to manager of communications for Aurora-based Raytheon. Her role with the World Trade Center and the prospect of a future-oriented campus in the River North neighborhood has the 48-year-old Gerwitz looking ahead to what she hopes will be Denver's expanding presence on the global playing field.

What was your introduction to international business?

My only exposure to anything global growing up had been reading National Geographic. My parents were not big travelers. The summer before college, I worked in magazine subscriptions ... and there was an AIESEC trainee there who I became friends with. It's this [French] acronym that stands for the International Association of Students in Economic and Commercial Sciences. And then I got into AIESEC when I was in college. Actually, that's how I met Jeff [Popiel, CEO of Geotech]. He was in AIESEC as well. We've known each other for a long time, which is another good reason why I'm here.

Any specific takeaways from that experience that apply to your work today?

In AIESEC ... I'd go to companies all over Denver, asking them to hire a foreign student. It just so happens that those companies I was meeting when I was a student in 1986 are now--a lot of them, anyway--on my board. It's a small, tight community. Ever since I've been a student, I've been trying to put Denver on the global map.

You spent five years at the state International Trade Office (now part of the Colorado Office of Economic Development), followed by a communications role at Raytheon, in Aurora. Did you ever work abroad?

A woman called me with a job offer in Vienna, Austria that started in two weeks. I said yes, and worked for a global science institute, selling media. It was a yearlong contract in 2001.

How long has World Trade Center Denver been around?

How does it function?

It was actually Metro State University that bought our license from New York in 1987. In 1989 they transferred the license to this nonprofit that was forming, and so we became the World Trade Center Denver...