John Street, co-founder and CEO of Greenwood Village-based cloud marketplace Pax8, jokes about his personal leadership style.

“The truth is, I’m kind of a lazy guy,” said Street, a Denver native who lives in Colorado Springs. “I learned a long time ago that if I hire smart people and let them do their jobs, I don’t have to work as much.”

Scores of Colorado businesspeople who have known Street for decades would vehemently disagree, as would Gov. Jared Polis, who awarded the career business leader with the Governor’s Citizenship Medal, the state’s highest civic honor.

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In partnership with the leadership development organization CiviCO, Polis awarded the Citizenship Medal last week to six noteworthy Coloradans: Street; photographer John Fielder (who was awarded posthumously); Women’s Foundation of Colorado CEO Lauren Young Casteel; Steamboat and Ski Resort Corporation CEO Rob Perlman; student Osvaldo Garcia Barron; and civil rights leader (and youngest member of the Little Rock Nine) Carlotta Walls LaNier.

Street was also named one of Denver Business Journal’s Most Admired CEOs of 2023 and ColoradoBiz Magazine’s CEO of the Year in 2022.

“It seems like every year, he’s collecting awards,” said Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade in an interview with CiviCO.

While he is proud of the accolades, Street is a little uncomfortable talking about them.

“I don’t seek these things,” he said. “I’m proud of the award, and I’m happy to get it, but to me it’s just a validation that if you have a truly altruistic spirit, good things can happen.”

Founded in 2012, Pax8 is the latest business Street has launched in a career that goes back nearly 40 years. In 1986, at just 29 years of age, he became CEO of Telephone Express and helped turn it into the Rocky Mountain region’s biggest long-distance service provider. In 1995 he founded USA.Net, which launched the world’s first web-based email service. He also founded an email/web security firm and an agricultural biotech company.

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Along the way, Street has endeavored to set his employees up for success and has mentored scores of Colorado businessmen and businesswomen. One such mentee is Colorado Springs’ current mayor.

“He sees what other people don’t see,” Mobolade said.

“In many ways, I feel like I’m a beneficiary of that style of leadership. Here you have a political newcomer, a no-name person … many people went, ‘Eh, I don’t know.’ But John went, ‘I actually see something.’”

Street said his mentorship efforts are just his way of giving back.

“During my career, I had a great mentor who taught me lots of smart things. I’ve always thought it was important to pay that forward. I enjoy doing that, and I’m happy to help people.”

According to the Institute for Cultural Evolution, Street’s longtime involvement with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic helped transform it from a near-bankrupt enterprise to the growing institution it is today.

“That’s part of John’s legacy,” Mobolade said of the Philharmonic. “(He decided) ‘this organization is too important to fail. Not only is it going to survive, it’s gonna thrive.’ And it is thriving.”

Because he prefers to work behind the scenes, Street is one of Colorado’s best-kept secrets. 

“That’s who John Street is,” Mobolade said. “He’s an innovative, driven leader who is not seeking notoriety or any kind of credit for the work that he does.”

Street said he has never really sought leadership positions; they seem to find him.

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“Ever since I was a kid, I was always in some leadership position,” he said. “If I was on a team, they would name me captain. My senior year in high school, I was student body president. I’m not sure why, but whenever I was part of a group people would turn to me and say, ‘Why don’t you lead?’”

Stressing the concept of “servant leadership,” Street has grown Pax8 into a firm with 1,700 employees in 23 countries.

“Customer service starts with having happy employees in your organization,” he said.

“People like to say the customer comes first, but I think that’s lip service. If you have happy employees, your customers are dealing with people who enjoy their jobs, so they’re bound to have a good customer experience.”

Street’s ability to see things down the road extends to his personal and professional life. At 67, he isn’t quite ready for retirement yet, but he’s looking at potential leaders in the company with an eye toward selecting a new generation of leaders for his firm when he decides to move on to his next chapter.

“I’m actively working on handing off the company to the next generation of leaders,” he said. “There are people here, who are smarter than I am, with the ability to move this company forward in ways I might not even think of.”

For the time being, Street said he intends to keep growing the company, mentoring Colorado’s future leaders, and serving the community — in Colorado Springs and beyond.

“Let’s not kid ourselves,” he said. “There’s probably three people on planet Earth that are doing anything so meaningful that, hundreds of years from now, people will look at and say ‘Wow, that was really something.’ For the rest of us, the best we can do is do solid, good work, enjoy ourselves, and invest in our community. And spread a little joy along the way.”