Richard Child and his family have lived full-time in Mountain Village since 2006; they fell in love with the region on a summer visit in 1999, when they bought their current home.

Daughter, Alexa, an incoming sophomore at Holy Cross University, in Worcester, Mass., graduated last year from Telluride High School; daughter Jacqueline will be a junior at THS next fall.

Child comes to the Telluride region with a mile-long resume from his 31 years in the financial services industry, 16 of those years working with MasterCard International, most recently as vice president as well as president of its Latin America and Caribbean regions.

Child, who now works for MPOWER Labs, was a founder and principal of the Mattrix Group, a consultancy practice created to assist and support companies in the areas of business strategy and development. During his management of Mattrix Group, Child “was involved in or directed numerous projects ranging from restructuring banks' payment divisions, identifying business efficiencies, developing new products, designing specific marketing plans (including those for the Hispanic segment in the USA), conducting market assessments and studies, to undertaking operational reviews and risk management analysis.”

Child holds the unusual distinction of being the first non-Telluride Ski and Golf Co. employee to have represented Telski as a voting member of the Telluride-Mountain Village Owners Association – a distinction he plays down, saying” I was Telski’s representative to the annual meeting, held in December.”

His experience in the global financial sector, however, gives him an unusual vantage point on the problems that beset Mountain Village today, Child suggests – and has perhaps led to some of his at-first-blush unorthodox-sounding ideas.

If elected to council, Child said in a telephone interview from Austin, Tex., where he was working, “I would help the town continue down the path it has already undertaken to ensure accountability and transparency, so that decisions that affect our town are made by people who reside in and truly represent the town, and will have to live with the consequences of their decisions.” For example, he says: I would push for requiring that all [Design Review Board] members be property owners or full-time residents” of Mountain Village, so that they experience directly the ramifications of their decision-making.”

If elected to council, Child says: “I want to support the initiatives that are already underway in Mountain Village…in this community that is really organized and led by its people.”

As to a recent period of unease between Mountain Village Town Council and the Telluride-Mountain Village Owners Association, Child suggests that it was a kind of growing pain, due to a necessary “separation of powers” between the town, its now-dissolved Metro District and the TMVOA, its property-owners association. “These changes are always sometimes a little bit painful,” he says, but hastens to add that “Mountain Village moved forward, as both town council and TMVOA came a long way.”

During his time serving on the TMVOA board, he says: “I really wanted to contribute my time and professional expertise,” a contribution he hopes to continue making “on town council, as we continue down the path of getting more in terms of insurability, accountability and transparency.

“We really have to work endlessly to get people to participate” in the process, he adds.

Bottom line, Child says: “I still think Mountain Village lacks an identity; I honestly don’t think that we, as a community, really know what we want to be when we grow up. We all have a lot of ideas – we want, on the one side, to develop, and on the other side, we don’t want overcrowding.” He goes on to express the concern that “we want to have our cake, and eat it too.”

Moving forward, he says, the Mountain Village Town Council must “really think, OK, what is it that we really want, and then organize and structure ourselves around that. It’s really important that we determine who we want to be and how we want to go about it.” To that end: “We really have to look at what amenities we can provide the community – and affordable housing is definitely a need – and what type of economic development activities we can put forward to reach a more sustainable work force, and not be so dependent on tourism.”

As development continues, he says, a focus on economic development is essential. “We have to work closer with Telluride,” he says, hastening to add this observation “is by no means a criticism of the current administration.

“We really have not hit the nail on the head as to what we can do, together, to deliver seamless service – we need more integration in terms of economic development; we must look for efficiencies in the government.”

As a Briton raised in Argentina, Child says: I have definitely been exposed to two cultures all my life – Anglo and Latin – and I am very, very involved in developing markets all around the world today, spending most of my time with Latin America and Asian-Pacific businesses.”

When he’s home, in Mountain Village, Child says, he volunteers at nursing homes in Montrose, where he has particularly enjoyed hearing stories of long-ago from Telluride residents.

And it’s no accident, he agrees, that daughter Alexa is now a political science major at Holy Cross, in Worcester. “She is very much into government and people’s rights,” he says, “and I guess she inherited part of her father’s striving for fairness.”