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About Us
Westside Watch was formed out of an organic interest in commonly shared concerns and roadblocks facing many neighborhoods on the west side of Colorado Springs. Cheyenne Canon Neighbor Donna Strom saw The Mountain Shadows Community Association struggling in a battle all too familiar which she had bravely fought in 2019 in the Appeal of the Broadmoor Convention Center Expansion. Together with her comrad in arms, Dana Duggan, who also worked on the Broadmoor Convention Center Expansion, they began sharing what they had learned and resources with Bill Wysong, the President of the Mountain Shadows Community Association. More and more neighborhoods starting having similar issues, and we realized that we needed to form an alliance of neighbors helping neighbors along the west side of the city - and, voila, here we are with an incredibly energized and varied group of voters from across the city working for our common goals and shared ideals. It's also just an incredibly talented team -- and darn nice folks who give freely of their time reaching out and connecting others for the betterment of us all.
President, Mr. William (Bill) G. Wysong, Jr.: Bill is currently the Mountain Shadows Community Association (MSCA) President, and the Acting President of the Westside Watch. Bill was a board member for 3 years with the MSCA before taking over the president position nearly two years ago. As a founding member of Westside Watch, the focus is on ensuring the west side of Colorado Springs will be fairly represented in community planning and development. Bill and his wife, Dorian, have lived in the Mountain Shadows area for fifteen years and are avid gardeners and grandparents. Bill graduated from the University of Oregon, earned an MBA, and moved to the Colorado Springs area in 1986 working for the ROLM corporation, and continued with the telecommunications industry for 40 years. He is currently the owner of Fortress Home Inspection. Bill has volunteered for many years with the Boy Scouts of America in various leadership positions and attained the Rank of Eagle Scout during his high school years in Eugene, Oregon.
Vice President, Mr. Jim Shirley: Jim is a product of the Farm and Ranch industry in central Oklahoma where his great-grandfather, grandfather and great-uncle broke-out land during the Oklahoma land rush in the late 1800’s. The family then obtained land in southeastern Colorado as land became available. Jim grew up in Lamar Colorado and returned every summer to help with the farms in Oklahoma until graduating in 1976. He then attended the University of Northern Colorado majoring in economics. In 1981 he arrived in Colorado Springs and started his construction career with GH Phipps Construction Companies. The companies focus were commercial projects including Rampart High School, Hewlett Packard, Rolm Telecommunications, best known as 2424 GOG, COS Airport, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Colorado College, Centura Health to name a few. GH Phipps was one of the largest Construction Management Companies in the country while performing projects only along the front range of Colorado. Jim was the president of El Paso County Contractors and a member of the Associated General Contractors of America. Jim was also an Employee Trustee helping to manage union Health and Welfare, Pension Plans and negotiating triennial union contracts. Later, he owned and operated a Specialty Construction Company for eleven years before selling the business and joining the retirement ranks. He is currently the President of the Skyway Association which encompasses over 1250 homes and works with Historical Neighborhood Partnership, a newly formed organization providing oversight to the city’s ReTool COS, Affordable Housing Initiative and Connect COS. Jim believes the city has a responsibility for transparency and the safety of the public over developers interests thus his passion for Westside Watch.
Board Member, Ms. Dana Duggan: Dana is the granddaughter and daughter of All American and NFL football players, the colorful Cactus Face Duggan and Gip Duggan as well as the step great granddaughter of Adolphus Knopf who was credited with nearly eradicating TB, founded the National Department of Health, the American Lung Association and Planned Parenthood with Margaret Sanger. A graduate of Casady School, she earned her B.A. from Vanderbilt. Following a stint living in Aix-en-Provence and a year working on Music Row in Nashville, she spent the next three decades of her life working as an executive with Bozell, Nielsen, Verizon Interactive Television/Disney Partnership (where she managed a $20,000,000 marketing budget to test launch the first interactive television networks in Tampa and Cerritos/Thousand Oaks), Lifetime (where she launched the Lifetime Movie Network), Cox Interactive Media (where she did the first Superstitial ad on the Internet) as well as numerous start-up companies with her friend and business partner from Palo Alto. The convergence of media is one of her passions; she held several conferences where FCC Commissioner James Quello, Leo Hindery/TCI, Michael Gee/Verizon americast, Mark Cuban/Broadcast.com, Les Moonves/CBS, Todd Wagner/Broadcast.com, Ward Huey/Belo Corporations gave their best guess as to what the future of television might look like. While working in Dallas, Dana earned her M.B.A. from the Cox School of Business going to night classes from 1993-1996.
Prior to founding Westside Watch, she was co-founder of Save Cheyenne who successfully led the effort to stop the Broadmoor's attempt to close W Cheyenne Mountain Blvd and fought for Strawberry Fields to remain in public hands. She is also on the Board of Directors of Cheyenne Central. Through her volunteer work with the Junior League, she was a public speaker and volunteer for Bryan's House, the first shelter of its kind providing services to families impacted by HIV as well as the Genesis Women's Shelter and CASA. She held many board positions with the American Women in Radio & Television, American Broadcast Executives of Texas, Women in Cable & Television, Dallas-Fort Worth Interactive Marketing Association and the Texas Association of Broadcasters where she was both honored with an award for her work presented by Bob Schieffer as well as delighted to be on a team who launched the Amber Alert, now a nationwide alert system for missing and abducted children. Her most fulfilling work, however, is Mom to her two vivacious daughters.
Mr. John McLain: Mr. McLain’s father retired as the Executive Director of the Joint Chief of Staff. His father advised President Kennedy in the Pentagon War Room during the entire 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis. Susan and David Eisenhower, grandchildren of President Eisenhower attended one of Mr. McLain’s preschool birthday parties. His youngest sister is named after Barbara Anne Eisenhower, granddaughter of President Eisenhower.
Mr. McLain’s technical skills landed him 13 Patents – 6 for modeling and simulation. Mr. McLain refused Bell Canada’s $147M offer for one of his simulation tools. His strategic skills earned him a direct report position to the CIO in a global telecommunications equipment manufacturing company where he was Head of R&D for the Americas. Based on the company metrics, he took the 8th place organization to 1st place in less than two years. His tactical skills in a Fortune 100 telecommunications company that served 85 million customers made him the “go to guy” for high impact projects. Mr. McLain led the team that won the FTS-2001 (Federal Government Telecommunications Systems) contract worth $8.5 billion in 2001. He also led the development of the 800 Service and Advanced 800 Service products, both worth billions of dollars per year in today's money. He created the first AI (Artificial Intelligence) program that stabilized the Nation’s 2nd largest long distance network. He embedded himself in the team that struggled for 8 years to create a self-healing network. In less than 9 months, the Real-Time-Restoration tool was created, which replaced 3-day manual intervention to repair major network outages to less than 3 minutes – an important milestone for customer retention.
Boards: Mr. McLain served 6 years on an education board with the focus on advancement of technology. Participants from 350 companies and guest speakers came from all over the world to the all-day, semi-annual seminars. Mr. McLain also served on the Colorado Governor’s Advisory Board for 6 years. He met with the CDOT (Colorado Department of Transportation) management and engineers to design safer an more cost effective rumble strips. The new design was adapted, is safer for the public, and saves CDOT millions of dollars a year on milling cost. Mr. McLain took the lead for developing the bicycle and pedestrian chapter in the Inter-modal Transportation Plan. He also testified in the Colorado House and Senate to support a bill that became law. His testimony focused on the positive financial gain to the State of Colorado which generated an estimated $50M per year in tax revenue.
Sports: Mr. McLain competed at the international level where he broke two international records. In a different discipline, he played the Northern Virginal tennis champion and won the tie breaker in a 5 set match. His fastest mile was 4:27. Mr. McLain coached an 8 year struggling cyclist to become a guest rider in 1.5 years at the Tour de Femme (the women’s equivalent to the men’s Tour de France). She was eventually signed as a tier-1 rider for the Canadian professional cycling team. He also coached a para-athlete that won 5 gold metals competing against non-para-athletes in the National Senior Games. The following year, she won 3 gold medals.