Susan Polis Schutz (née Polis; born May 23, 1944) is an American

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...

, film-maker, and businesswoman who co-founded the greeting card and book publisher Blue Mountain Arts. She is the mother of Colorado Governor

Jared Polis Jared Schutz Polis (; born May 12, 1975) is an American politician, entrepreneur, businessman, and philanthropist, serving as the 43rd governor of Colorado since January 2019. He served one term on the Colorado State Board of Education from 200 ...

Early life and education

Schutz was born in

Peekskill, New York Peekskill is a city in northwestern Westchester County, New York, United States, from New York City. Established as a village in 1816, it was incorporated as a city in 1940. It lies on a bay along the east side of the Hudson River, across fro ...

, and is the daughter of June (née Keller) and David Polis. Her grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Russia. Schutz earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from

Rider University Rider University is a private university in Lawrence Township, New Jersey. It consists of four academic units: the Norm Brodsky College of Business, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the College of Education and Human Services, and West ...

in 1966, where she studied English and biology.

Career

After earning her undergraduate degree, Schutz worked as a teacher and social worker in the

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), ...

neighborhood of

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. She also took graduate courses in psychology and worked as a freelance writer for local publications. Schutz and Blue Mountain Arts came to wider attention with the founding, in 1996, of the bluemountain.com website. One of the earliest experiments with the electronic greeting card medium, the site was widely adopted by web users. In 1999, the dot-com venture

Excite@Home @Home Network was a high-speed cable Internet service provider from 1996 to 2002. It was founded by Milo Medin, cable companies Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), Comcast, and Cox Communications, and William Randolph Hearst III, who was their f ...

bought bluemountain.com in a deal valued at $780 million. The 1999 price paid for bluemountain.com became an example of what was later seen as the excesses of the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...

: the website was sold again in 2001, to greeting card company

American Greetings American Greetings Corporation is a privately owned American company and is the world's second largest greeting card producer behind Hallmark Cards. Based in Westlake, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland, the company sells paper greeting ...

, for just $35 million in cash. Schutz is the executive producer and director of the documentary film ''Anyone and Everyone.'' The film featured the coming-out stories of gay sons and daughters and their parents and premiered on KPBS public television in

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...

in August 2007, before being scheduled to air on a number of other public television stations in the United States.

Personal life

Schutz has two grandchildren through her son Jared and son-in-law

Marlon Reis Marlon Reis (born July 1, 1981) is an American animal rights advocate, writer, and first gentleman of Colorado as the husband of 43rd governor of Colorado Jared Polis. He became the first same-sex first gentleman in the United States following t ...

References

External links

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Blue Mountain Arts
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schutz, Susan Polis 1944 births Living people American Reform Jews American businesspeople American women poets American people of Russian-Jewish descent People from Peekskill, New York Writers from New York (state) 20th-century American poets 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers 21st-century American poets Rider University alumni