Her Story
About Johnna
I have been working in social services in different capacities for my whole career for the past 25 years. During COVID, I saw how much homelessness was affecting our community and asked myself if there was something I could do about it, if I could lend my skills to making it better in any capacity. The first step was going out and learning what was going on, how we got here, and what was being done about the issue. I did this with a friend of mine who is a documentary filmmaker, and we went out and interviewed dozens of folks - people living on the streets, people formerly unhoused, advocates, policymakers, and people running programs. We asked them about their stories, what was going on, and how the community was responding. We ended up turning that into a podcast. For me, it really pointed out three major gaps that I felt like I could tend to with my skills. One, while there's a lot going on around homelessness here and a lot of services, there's no one situated to look at how they all fit together and compare the community need to how we're meeting those needs from a systems lens, and that's one of my specialty areas. Two, how do we collectively solve for any challenge points? And three, how do we situate people with lived experience to be the core experts guiding those processes? Once I figured out there might be a spot for that, I created Elevated Denver, and that's been our work ever since.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Johnna
01What do you attribute your success to?
I would say two things. One is the way I was raised. I have two amazing parents, but I was raised primarily by my mom. I have a great relationship with my dad too, but my mom really was a single mom, and she was a fierce advocate for social justice, educational justice, and everything she believed in. She really set an example for me about not backing down, and when you believe in something, believe in it wholly and devote yourself to it. That's just been ingrained in me through my whole life. But also, creating a nonprofit might sound like easy lifting to some folks, but it's actually been a really challenging process. It's been hard to get funding and everything else, and I've had to volunteer my time for the past four years. I could not do what I do without my husband, and not just the monetary support, but he stands behind me and is my loudest champion. He just lifts me up when I'm feeling down and supports me in every imaginable way. I truly could not do this if I didn't have that.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Whatever you care about and want to do in this world is valuable. There might be barriers in place, and I've certainly faced plenty of barriers putting this off the ground and getting it funded or getting some of the things accepted and valued. But the truth is, I know that when I operate with integrity and clarity on the vision and the change that I want to make in the world, I trust that it'll come about. I think that there's a lot of folks doing great work in the social good, and I think that in our society, we've got a little ways to catch up on placing value on that in the way that we place value on other things like technology or business. What I tell my girls is that doing good in the world isn't charity, but it's something that is incumbent upon us, not as women, but as members of our communities, as citizens of this world. And if somebody's gonna lead the charge, why not us? I don't want to place that burden on them, but I think that women have a unique capacity to hold multiple things at once and allow multiple things to be true and see through some of the facade. Therefore, we have a window into the world of what could be, and so it feels incumbent upon us to create it.
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