Former CEO of DaVita Kent Thiry says the best way to grow a business is through the culture.

Whether it’s investing in a workshop to help employees become aware of their weaknesses, or a team building exercise, it’s the culture that helps build a business.

“I think many CEOs don’t realize how much they can do for the world by just investing more in people that work within the company,” said Thiry “As we helped individual teammates grow and we helped our teams work better together, that led to improved quality patient care and the caring for the patient.”

That investment helped the Denver-based healthcare company grow from $1 billion in annual revenue to $11 billion. And former DaVita employees now run other Fortune 500 Companies.

For those successes, along with being able to implement policy such as Let Colorado Vote, Thiry received the Growth and Innovation Award, which is one of the annual Colorado Governor’s Citizenship awards.

“He’s somebody who doesn’t just talk about the importance of public service or building community, he’s someone who actually does it,” Sen. Michael Bennet said in a video presentation.

“He managed the company like a village and treated everyone as a ‘citizen’ and the point of all that was to emphasize how everyone  should feel sense of responsibility and connection to each other to build a meaningful connection to the company.”

Thiry wanted to make  DaVita stand as tall as the redwood trees in Redwood National Park in Northern California. So he implemented the Redwood Program, which focused on building from within.

“As most people know, redwoods are the tallest, strongest, longest living trees in the world and there’s only one way to get one of those (trees) and that’s to grow it,” Thiry said.

“We wanted to have some of the strongest leaders within what we called the DaVita village, and while we still hired some people from the outside, for variety and diversity, we’re going to invest and grow our own redwoods, and that’s what we did.”

Thiry involved all 65,000 DaVita village teammates in various workshops including self-awareness training, empathy training and team-building training.

But without the advice received from a mentor, Dick Fontaine, these decision may have never happened.

“I think (Dick) planted the seeds for my subsequent decisions to invest in things like team building, like self awareness, like the Redwoods,” Thiry said.

Aside from growing DaVita into a multi-billion dollar corporation, Thiry has helped implement policy change in Colorado since moving here from California 11 years ago.

In 2016, Thiry led Let Colorado Vote, a group that wanted to re-establish the presidential primary in Colorado, while also opening its doors to independent voters for the very first time. Both initiatives were successful.

“Independents who had historically not been allowed to participate in any Democratic or Republican primary were allowed to do so for the first time, and as you know, there are more independents in Colorado than there are Democrats or Republican by a significant margin,” said Thiry.

According to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office, the state currently has 1.5 million unaffiliated registered voters, which is at least 400,000 more than either Republicans and Democrats.

Two years later, Thiry became involved in two more initiatives, designed to reduce gerrymandering in state and congressional redistricting.

More recently, Thiry assisted with the Vote Yes on Amendment B campaign that successfully repealed the Gallagher Amendment last November

“I’m a firm believer that most people in this country believe in compromise, believe in citizenship, believe in fairness and so if the leaders create a process for those basic values and manifest themselves, then really good things can happen,” Thiry said.

In June, after 21 years with DaVita, Thiry decided it was time to retire. But despite having more free time, he has chosen to continue to work: Advising various healthcare companies and staying busy in the civic realm.

He is especially involved with AdvanceEDU, an innovative hybrid college, founded by Thiry and his wife Denise, that gives underrepresented and low-income students the opportunity to earn an online college degree.

“We combine a very high quality degree with extensive support services for every single student, time management, stress management, course election, dealing with problems in the family, issues at work,” Thiry said.

“We’ve got our first cohort of students, who are doing great. (They) would’ve never been able to go to a traditional school, but now they’re on their path to a real degree.”

Between watching the Green Bay Packers, running an hybrid school, and advising healthcare companies, he still manages to ride his bike almost every day.

“I absolutely love to mountain bike. I work out every day, but separately I try to get out mountain biking as much as I can,” he said.

But even if Thiry is retired, Jandel Allen-Davis, the president and CEO of Craig Hospital said people will always join him for the ride.

“What really drives growth and what really drives innovation is all about connection and people … and he just has this infectious way of being able to really want people to come along and take the ride with him,” Allen-Davis said in a video presentation.