Representative Naquetta Ricks is the first African immigrant to be elected to the Colorado Legislature, and the first Liberian American to be elected to any state legislature. When she was only 13, she was forced to flee civil war in Liberia, and her family settled in Aurora, Colorado. Representative Ricks received her undergraduate degree in accounting at MSU, and her MBA from the University of Colorado Denver. She then went on to operate a successful small mortgage brokerage business and found the African Chamber of Commerce, Colorado USA. As a leading Black woman in business and politics, she works tirelessly to improve her community by helping build economic knowledge, and by championing the rights of immigrants and refugees. In her first session in the Colorado legislature, she led the fight on groundbreaking legislation including the creation of the Immigration Legal Defense Fund and the Diverse K-12 Workforce Report.