Cindy Rivera

My career has been shaped by being an Army spouse for 20 years, which set me up for working in lots of different places around lots of different social issues. Everything from behavioral health, mental health services for youth and families, public health, maternal health, and volunteerism. Wherever we went, I would try to work at a place that I really felt was giving back to the community. I've always had a very focused nature around youth and their families, and supporting them, especially amongst the most marginalized, historically marginalized populations. Throughout the years, I've become kind of a jack-of-all-trades, being able to do grant writing and organizational development for organizations, along with some very technical type of clinical trainings around mental health. That brought me to Change Matrix, where I really work mainly in capacity building with organizations, large and small, everywhere from states and counties and large systems in mental health, to smaller community-based organizations. The point is to help them do their job so that they can help the communities most in need. My role is really split into two parts: a big part is business development, identifying partnerships that would allow our company to continue to do the good work we do, looking for leads, meeting with people that might want to work with Change Matrix in their organizational change that may be happening specifically around health equity and working alongside communities. The other side is the more technical side, the actual work of working with the state on a plan around a behavioral health need, or with an organization doing strategic planning or supporting them in a very technical issue like data storytelling. I work across 4 or 5 different projects any given day, and my schedule really is half working alongside clients in their day-to-day, and then the other half is really supporting our organization in outlining our future and identifying leads for new projects that will help support communities where they're at. Every morning I'm very grateful that I get to do this and work with people all across the country, impacting communities all across the country. It's super rewarding and fun.