Angela Veronica "Angie" Paccione (born February 21, 1960) is an American politician and former Colorado legislator who was a 2006 Congressional candidate.
A college basketball player at Stanford and professional basketball player in the 1980s, Paccione became a high school coach, teacher and administrator before earning a Ph.D. in education and joining the faculty of Colorado State University.
Entering politics in 2002, Paccione, a Democrat, spent two terms representing west Fort Collins in the Colorado House of Representatives, rising to become House Majority Caucus Chair. In the legislature, she focused on issues relating to youth and higher education.
In 2006, she was the Democratic nominee for U.S. Congress in Colorado's 4th Congressional district, narrowly losing to two-term incumbent Republican Marilyn Musgrave. After briefly launching a second Congressional campaign in 2007, Paccione stepped out of the race to join a business consulting firm.
In 2019 Colorado Governor Jared Polis appointed Paccione to be the executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education. On January 17, 2019, she was unanimously voted into the position by the Senate Education Committee.
Biography
Paccione was born in the South Bronx in New York City to a single mother; she is biracial, with an English-Irish birth father and African-American mother. When she was ten years old, Paccione took the name of her step father, Paccione. After her family moved outside of the city, Paccione attended Cornwall Central High School in Orange County, where she played high school basketball, volleyball, and soccer. Excelling particularly in basketball, Paccione was a member of the 1977 USA Women's Select National Team, Parade Magazine First All-American Team and numerous other high school All-American Teams. During her sophomore year in high school, she also participated in tryouts for the United States' first Olympic women's basketball team in 1976, making it to the penultimate cut in the eastern division, but was not selected for the team.
After graduating from high school in 1978, Paccione received a full athletic scholarship to attend Stanford University. While at Stanford, she was a member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and, during summers, toured Europe with the Christian missionary basketball team "News Release". Paccione attended Stanford for five years; during that time, she played four years of college basketball, red-shirting during her junior year. She graduated in 1983 with a bachelor's degree and honors in political science and completed requirements for a degree in psychology as well. After college, Paccione also traveled with Athletes-in-Action, a sports ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ. After graduating, Paccione played professional basketball with the Columbus Minks, part of the Women's American Basketball Association before the league folded.
In 1985, Paccione moved to Colorado, where she worked at Excelsior Youth Center, a residential treatment center for troubled girls, for two years before earning her teaching license from the University of Denver. During her teacher training, Angie was awarded the Future Teacher Award by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education.
Paccione then taught social studies at Smoky Hill High School in Aurora, Colorado—then Colorado's second-largest high school—for four years, from 1987 to 1991. From 1991 to 1995, she was a dean of students responsible for student attendance, behavior and school culture. While at Smoky Hill, Paccione became the only woman in the history of Colorado to coach a high school boys' varsity sport (basketball) in the large school classification.
Between 1988 and 1992, eight monetary relief claims were filed against Paccione for uncollected debt, and she was sued by the state of Colorado for unpaid student loans. In 1992, Paccione declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and all debts were ultimately resolved. Paccione was required to repay all of the student loan and settled that debt in 1993. The bankruptcy and debts were later raised by political opponents in attack ads.