Posted on Jul 17, 2024
On July 17th, Jordan Boeder gave a classification talk introducing himself to the club.
Hello Rotary Club members, it's a pleasure to have the opportunity to introduce myself to the noon club. My name is Jordan Boeder and I joined the Rotary club this past May.
 
I was born and raised in a small suburban town in Northern California next to Berkeley. I went to Whittier College, where I met my wonderful wife Amanda who is a math teacher at Compass Community Collaborative. After undergrad, I went straight into a Ph.D. program in developmental psychology at Claremont Graduate University, where I studied under Jeanne Nakamura and Mike Csikszentmihalyi, the founders of the psychological phenomenon known as Flow.
 
When I wasn’t studying or writing papers, I was baking. I desperately needed an activity where I could see the end product after only a few hours. The fact that I love sweets and breads was the literal and figurative icing on the cake.
 
My expertise in graduate school was on the association between self-perceptions of aging and health. More specifically, my research papers and dissertation examined how we develop our stereotypes about aging and how those stereotypes can influence how we think about our own aging and, both directly and indirectly, our health and well-being in the second half of life.
 
I was fortunate enough to receive a Postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. After a wonderful year of intellectual and cultural exploration, I was offered a job in the private sector doing consumer and political research which called for me to cut my time abroad short and move back to the U.S.
 
Knowing we weren’t done exploring, my wife and I contacted two of our best friends who worked remotely and pitched the idea of moving to a new city together. As a group, we decided on Fort Collins. Since moving here two years ago, my love of all things outdoors, from hiking to hunting, has grown immensely.
 
Finally feeling settled in life, I felt a strong desire to give back to my community which led me to Rotary Club, and my presence here today.

Thank you all for the time, I look forward to building friendships with many of you!