Philanthropy has given me a place to bring together many of the questions that have shaped my professional life: how stories influence public understanding, how institutions use power, how communities define what they need, and how resources can support greater health, dignity, and opportunity. My work in strategic communications and external influence has shown me that philanthropy is not only about what is funded. It is also about who is heard, whose knowledge is trusted, how decisions are made, and whether institutions are willing to learn and change alongside the people and places they seek to support.
Much of my experience has been rooted in Colorado and within the field nationally in the U.S., where I have worked at the intersection of communications, health equity, community power, journalism, narrative change, and place-based philanthropy. I have learned from rural communities, nonprofit partners, grantees, colleagues, journalists, advocates, and leaders who understand their communities in ways no institution can replicate from a distance. Their insight continues to shape how I think about influence: not simply as the ability to reach an audience, but as the responsibility to create room for more people to shape the story, the strategy, and the future.
So far, this work has taught me to be wary of easy answers. Good intentions do not automatically create equitable outcomes. A compelling story can illuminate, but it can also flatten complexity or place someone else’s experience in service of an institutional narrative. Funding can expand possibility, but it can also reinforce existing power if communities are invited to participate without meaningful authority. The deeper lesson for me is that philanthropy must keep asking not only what it hopes to accomplish, but how it is building relationships, sharing power, honoring context, and remaining accountable along the way.
My current learning is widening beyond Colorado through research connected to the Atacama Desert and Chilean philanthropy. I am exploring how geography, culture, land, water, Indigenous knowledge, extractive economies, and distance from centers of power shape what philanthropy can and should do. I am especially interested in decentralization, community-defined priorities, ethical storytelling, and the difference between bringing resources into a place and genuinely supporting the people who already hold knowledge, relationships, and leadership there. I am carrying these questions comparatively and carefully, knowing that learning across places requires humility and that parallels should never erase distinct histories or realities.
I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to work in this field. Philanthropy has allowed me to learn from people whose courage, creativity, and commitment continually challenge me to think differently. It has given me a vantage point from which to see both the possibilities and the limits of institutions, and the privilege of contributing to work that can strengthen communities and expand what feels possible. I do not take that access, responsibility, or education for granted.
This page is a place to share what I am learning as that understanding evolves. I will write about narrative and power, place-based practice, rural communities, institutional responsibility, leadership, environmental justice, and the questions philanthropy must be willing to ask of itself. I offer these reflections not as final answers, but with appreciation for the people who have taught me, curiosity about what I have yet to understand, and hope for a field that can keep becoming more relational, more accountable, and more imaginative.
