Bob is Chairman of the Colorado State Board of Education. His Board constituency is the state’s Fourth Congressional District.

Bob is Chairman of the Leadership Program of the Rockies, a corporation providing economic and political leadership training in Colorado.  He is the Principal at Liberty Common High School and The Liberty Common School’s Junior High – a charter high school and junior-high school in Fort Collins, Colorado.  He is also a Trustee of Yorktown University.

From 1997 until early 2003, Bob represented Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives.  Upon his retirement from the Congress, Schaffer was awarded the Benemerenti Medal by His Holiness John Paul II.

Bob left the Congress to honor a voluntary term-limit pledge he had taken when he first ran.  Thereafter he became vice-president for business development at a Denver-based energy company where he was involved in a variety of conventional and renewable-energy, mining and education projects.  He resigned the position to run for a seat in the United States Senate in 2008.

Beginning in 1987, Bob served nine years in the Colorado State Senate, where he was Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Chairman of the State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee, and Vice-Chairman of the Senate Education Committee. Having just turned 25 when he was sworn in, Bob was the youngest person to serve in the Colorado State Senate.

From 1989 to 1995, Bob owned and operated Northern Front Range Marketing and Distribution, a small marketing business serving Colorado’s tourism industry.

Bob was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.  He graduated from Archbishop Moeller High School and the University of Dayton.  He received an honorary doctorate in Management from Colorado Technical University.  He holds a second-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

Bob and his wife Dr. Maureen Schaffer (electrical engineer) have five children.  Three are soldiers – Jenny is a Lieutenant in the US Army.  Her twin sister Emily is a Lieutenant in the US Air Force.  Justin is a Second Lieutenant in the US Army. The Schaffers are Roman Catholic and members of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in Fort Collins.