Issues

Climate Change & Environmental Justice 

Climate change is the most pressing and important issue for us to tackle as a state, country and planet. The UN’s 2022 Emissions Gap Report tells us that the world must cut emissions by 45% to avoid global catastrophe, and we are not on track for those necessary cuts. I understand people’s resistance to taking personal action on climate change and adjusting the way we live to ensure the lives of our children and grandchildren include clean air, abundant water, and a healthy biosphere. It can feel overwhelming to tackle the largest crisis our world has ever faced, and it’s hard to know where the individual fits in. I will fight, not only to pass policies doing everything within the state’s power to address this crisis for the catastrophe that it is, but I will also build community and engage our neighbors in understanding their role in healing the world we live in. I will fight to pass policies that shift the paradigm from business as usual, and instead reimagine the way we live and work together to save our planet. While directing the work at Young Invincibles, we worked on SB21-230, which funded the CO Energy Office to support the Colorado Clean Energy Fund, the Charge Ahead Colorado Program centering electric vehicles, and the Colorado New Energy Improvement District which finances clean energy projects. We also worked on SB21-240 and SB21-258 which directed funds toward addressing wildfire mitigation, protecting watersheds, and workforce development in clean energy. 

As your next State Representative, I will: 

  • Address the historic inequities that communities furthest from power and privilege face due to climate change

  • Invest in electric public transportation and EV infrastructure 

  • Create policies like greywater reuse for household and agricultural use 

  • Invest in sustainable infrastructure 

  • Hold polluters accountable and require changing practices 

  • Work to get Colorado off fossil fuel as quickly as possible

Reproductive Justice 

Every woman deserves affordable access to abortion care and birth control, no questions asked. Women’s healthcare is a basic human right. I am a survivor of sexual violence and I didn’t always have access to safe and affordable care. For thousands of women across Colorado, this can change the trajectory of their entire lives. While directing the work of Young Invincibles, we worked on the passage of HB22-1279, the Reproductive Health Equity Act, keeping abortion access protected in statute, as well as HB22-1055 which exempted essential hygiene products like tampons and pads from sales tax.

As your next State Representative, I will: 

  • Work to codify abortion care access into the state constitution so the Reproductive Health Equity Act can’t be overturned by future Republican legislatures

  • Protect providers of abortion care 

  • Expand funding for under or uninsured patients seeking abortion care


Healthcare 

I got into policy work from a background in healthcare. I worked as a care manager at a primary care clinic with patients that had type two diabetes. At the time, the clinic was grant funded, so I was able to see patients without insurance or documentation. Because they were able to come to the clinic every week and we were addressing the social determinants of their health, I was watching them get better. After being there for about a year and a half, we ran out of grant funding and could no longer help the folks we’d been building relationships with, walking shoulder to shoulder with, as they were given the healthcare they needed and tools to advocate for their health. I was quickly disillusioned with direct patient healthcare and started seeking what larger system reform would take. I got my start in healthcare policy working for the Integrative Health Policy Consortium, a federal health nonprofit, working on the affordable care act. In the past couple sessions, I’ve helped pass HB21-1232,  the Colorado Option, HB21-175, The Prescription Drug Affordability Board, SB21-123, Expanding prescription importation from Canada, HB22-1370, Coverage Requirements for Healthcare Products, HB22-1279 The Reproductive Health Equity Act, HB22-1055 Sales Tax Exemption for essential hygiene products, SB22-009 Program Allowing Redispensing of Unused Drugs, and SB22-219 Regulating Dental Therapists. 

Access to culturally competent healthcare should be a basic human right in this country. Without the federal government, it will be hard to develop an effective single-payer system but as I continue to chip away at incremental reforms to our healthcare system, I will also fight for large-scale changes in the way we deliver and pay for healthcare in this country. It is unconscionable that some people are getting rich off other’s ill health.

As your next state representative I will: 

  • Continue to explore single-payer system options for our state

  • Hold hospitals and insurance companies accountable for high prices and require adequate reporting to ensure our healthcare dollars are being spent effectively 

  • Continue to pass policies lowering the price of prescription drugs 

  • Advocate for medical debt relief 

Mental Health 

As a survivor of violence, I intimately understand the need for affordable, accessible and culturally competent mental and behavioral health care. Over the years, I’ve mentored close to one hundred women who have experienced trauma, addiction or eating disorders and the stories I most frequently hear are those of not being able to find or afford mental healthcare. As the director of YI, we run research every year asking young adults across the state what is most important to them, what they’re most affected by, and what policy solutions they need. Over and over again, we hear a loud and persistent call for better access to mental healthcare. We teach the power of lived experience at YI, and one incredible example of that was on HB21-1086, which requires insurance to cover an annual mental health check up, in the same way they’re required to cover an annual physical. We worked closely with many of our advocates on telling their incredibly vulnerable stories of mental health and prepared them to share those stories in committee hearings on this bill. We were very unsure if the bill would pass out of committee, as we couldn’t get clear commitments from the legislators, but after several hours of listening to the lived experience of the young adults we work with, the bill passed out of committee with unanimous bipartisan support. We also developed the Healthy Minds Checklist for college campuses which outlines what institutions must provide for their students in order to be considered a Healthy Minds Campus. This has created mental health resources for students across our state and created a template for other states to follow. In the most recent session, we worked on HB22-1278, creating the behavioral health administration, HB22-1281 which created the Behavioral Health-care Continuum Grant Program and HB22-1356 creating a fund for small community-based nonprofit to receive grants to address mental health. With all three of these bills, I worked to ensure legislators understand the social determinants of mental health, and that they had an eye toward integration of other siloed sectors, to ensure patients were being seen as whole people, rather than as their mental health diagnosis.

As your next state representative, I will:

  • Continue to fight and fund the integration of care between siloed sectors 

  • Ensure the BHA has community and person-centered policies 

  • Continue to invest in innovative policies that create more resources for young people to meet their mental health needs 

Education 

A high quality education, and whether our kids have access to lunch at school, a school with books and materials, and teachers who make a living wage shouldn’t be dependent on their zipcode. In 2018, I helped run Jeffco’s 5A/5B mill bond campaign to ensure our neighborhood public schools have more access to funding in their classrooms and their facilities. Since then, at my work both at MSU Denver (the only open-access institution in Denver Metro, and the school serving the most first-generation, Pell-eligible and underrepresented minority students in the state), and as the director of YI, I’ve worked on the passage of many innovative policies improving our k-12 and higher education systems. In 2021, I led on HB21-1067, the first bill in the country to give students the option of whether to submit their national test scores (ACT or SAT) to all Colorado public institutions of higher education. Research has clearly shown that the SAT and ACT aren’t predictors of college success, but are rather predictors of privilege at home. We worked on HB21-1200, revising student financial literacy standards in highschools, SB21-057 protecting private borrowers of student loans, SB21-215, expanding open education resources or free college textbooks, HB21-1173 prohibiting colleges from admitting students based on legacy status and we advocated and successfully lobbied for a $100 million priority of general fund dollars to go to institutions serving underrepresented minorities, Pell-eligible, and first-generation students to create more equity in our higher education system. In 2022, we worked on SB22-008 creating free college for foster youth, HB22-1002/HB22-1390 which created a fifth year of high school concurrent enrollment so students can earn college credits while still in highschool, and HB22-1255 Advancing Success for Students with Disabilities. Fighting for equity in education gives our kids opportunities for more equity in their lives.

As your next state representative, I will: 

  • Continue to fund our neighborhood schools and completely pay off the budget stabilization factor (negative factor)

  • Support ballot measures that require the wealthiest Coloradans to pay their fair share in order to fund our education system

  • Fight for equity in higher education with the eventual goal of tuition-free college for Coloradans 

  • Continue to expand resources so the social determinants of student’s success are met 

Gun Violence

Like many of us, I’ve lost several people in my life to gun violence and feel the impacts of gun violence in our community far too frequently. As a mother, I feel the visceral fear of losing my daughter to gun violence and live with the constant low-grade anxiety that nowhere is safe. We can’t go to schools, the movies, grocery stores, restaurants, tattoo shops or nightclubs without constant vigilance, and we shouldn’t have to live this way.

As your next state representative, I will:

  • Strengthen the Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO) policy to ensure folks experiencing mental health crises don’t have access to firearms

  • Pass policies that require background checks for people with violent misdemeanors 

  • Pass policies that change the legal age to purchase a firearm to 21+

  • Pass policies that require waiting periods to purchase a firearm

  • Pass policies that create registrations and insurance requirements for firearm owners and dealers

  • Pass policies that create liability for gun manufacturers

  • Fight to ban assault weapons 

  • Fight to ban concealed carry on college campuses

Economic Justice & The Workforce

Too many structural barriers exist that make it difficult for people to get ahead, and this is deeply exacerbated for folks who have to grapple with systemic racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, or other forms of bigotry. In the past several years, I’ve worked hard on policies that create more economic justice across the workforce and tackle barriers for folks furthest from power. In 2021, I ran a research project in partnership with the Women’s Foundation of Colorado looking at the barriers women in the workforce face, and what we found was that the cost of childcare is one of the largest barriers to women’s ability to succeed in the modern workforce. From this research, we worked on SB21-236, which increased capacity for early childhood care and education. We also worked on SB21-077 which removed the requirement of lawful presence in order to get credentials through DORA, as many of the folks we heard from were DACA recipients that had completed an educational program but were unable to get their professional license to practice in the field they studied in. In 2021, we worked on SB21-148 creating the Financial Empowerment Office, SB21-087 the Agricultural Workers Rights bill, and SB21-060, Expanding Broadband service. In 2022, we worked on HB22-1220 Removing Barriers to Education Preparation, HB22-1010 Early Childhood Educator Tax Credit, HB22-1295 creating the Department of Early Childhood, SB22-086 Expanding Consumer Debt Protections and SB22-230 which expanded public bargaining for unions.

As your next state representative, I will: 

  • Continue to fight for policies that expand and protect workers rights 

  • Continue the fight to expand collective bargaining in the public sector 

  • Continue to support apprenticeships and alternative pathways

Criminal Justice

The school to prison pipeline in our country is horrifying and many of the justice system-involved youth I’ve worked with just needed access to resources, not to be sentenced to jail time. Similarly, I’ve lost many friends to substance use disorders, and locking people with a disease up, rather than providing the resources and care they need for recovery is a heartbreaking and unacceptable precedent. Rather than creating new felonies and criminalizing addiction, we need to invest deeply in the resources people need in order to thrive. While reducing the number of people, especially Black and Latine people, who are put behind bars, and investing in policies that reduce recidivism, we also need to invest in housing, food access, mental and behavioral healthcare and policies that create more economic justice.

As your next state representative, I will: 

  • Fight to decriminalize simple possession while investing in recovery programs for substance use disorders 

  • Hold law enforcement accountable for the harms they cause to community 

  • Fight for funding root problems rather than criminalizing the outcomes of under resourcing our communities

Housing

Everyone deserves a safe place to go home to and although the legislature has made historic investments in housing and homelessness in the past two years, it’s not enough to meet the need for affordable housing. Three in five Coloradans say their community is in a housing crisis. In my work with YI, we hear from young people all the time about how they’re living in their cars or couch surfing at friend’s houses because they can’t afford to rent in the Denver Metro area. In 2021, we worked on HB21-1271, which created three programs in the Department of Local Affairs to offer grants and assistance to local governments for affordable housing. We need to be working with cities to ensure land use issues are being navigated with all of Colorado in mind.

As your next state representative, I will:

  • Vote to protect renters

  • Fight to stop sweeps of unhoused communities 

  • Fight for funding and resources for our unhoused communities 

  • Require developers to include a percentage of affordable units in all new builds


Immigration

I started my career out of college working at a primary care clinic as a care coordinator for primarily uninsured immigrants, many of whom spoke little to no English and felt a constant fear of deportation. At YI, a huge number of the youth we work with are either immigrants themselves, or are children of immigrants. Expecting children to help parents navigate the complicated web of immigration issues in our country and state is sadly the position many of these families find themselves in. Even though they deeply contribute to our communities, economy, and workforce, they’re seen as “illegal” or second-class citizens. The reasons families and people choose to immigrate to America are complicated and every person’s story is unique, but we need to ensure that no matter if our neighbors born in other countries are fleeing violence or looking for a life with more opportunities, we have policies in place that support their relocation to Colorado and help them to thrive on their path toward citizenship. In 2021, we worked on HB21-1194, the Immigration Legal Defense Fund, appropriating grant funding opportunities to nonprofit organizations working to provide legal advice and representation for immigrants to Colorado. We also worked on SB21-077 which removed the requirement of lawful presence in order to get credentials through DORA as many of the folks we heard from were DACA recipients that had completed an educational program but were unable to get their professional license to practice in the field they studied in.

As your next state representative, I will: 

  • Continue to fight for funding into immigrant legal defense funds

  • Continue to fight for education and higher education access for undocumented Coloradans 

  • Protect DACA students

Food Access

Access to healthy food and clean water is a basic human right which should be made available to all Coloradans regardless of where you live and how much money you have. We have communities all across our state that exist in food deserts, where the only access to food is convenience stores, if anything. Working in healthcare and the social determinants of health opened my eyes to the vast disparities in access to healthy food, and our state has a responsibility to address the gaps that many families face. No family should have to choose between feeding their children dinner and keeping the electricity on. At YI, we developed the Hunger Free campus checklist, which outlines what institutions of higher education should provide to students to ensure no student is going hungry, including on-campus food banks. This model, similar to our Healthy Minds checklist, is now being used as a template for institutions across the country. We also worked on SNAP access in the past several years, to ensure that people who are eligible for SNAP benefits know how to apply and access them, and worked to expand eligibility for college students.

As your next state representative, I will: 

  • Continue to fund the SNAP program 

  • Invest in community-based food pantries 

  • Work in partnership with communities in food deserts to address their lack of access to healthy food

Transportation

Many of us moved to Colorado because of the close access to nature our state provides, but without a car, we’re severely limited in that very access. Getting gas powered cars off the roads is deeply important for our climate goals, but in order to do that with equity, we need rebates for purchases of electric vehicles and investment in alternative transportation infrastructure.

As your next state representative, I will:

  • Continue the investment in EV infrastructure across the state so that owning an electric vehicle is more feasible 

  • Invest in infrastructure like bike lanes and sidewalks through Denver and Denver Metro to improve access to biking and safety

  • Fund state rebates to purchase electric vehicles 

  • Invest in RTD to ensure the lightrail is safe and running throughout our state

  • Support electrifying city buses

Voting &Civic Engagement 

Voting is the foundation our democracy is built on and although we have incredible access to the ballot in Colorado through mail-in voting, same-day registration and early access to in-person voting, we need to ensure these policies stay law, as Republicans across our country continue to successfully strip citizen’s rights to vote. That said, voting is the least we can do to be civically engaged. Part of my work at YI is teaching young adults furthest from power and privilege how to best engage in the political process to make changes in their communities and lives. Voting is deeply important, and we run get out the vote programs to ensure folks who feel disempowered know how and where to vote, but we also teach them all the other places they can use their voice and their lived experience to change the world. Civic engagement means telling our stories to decision makers to ensure they see the whole picture when they’re passing policies. It means organizing our communities to tell their stories and getting the lived experiences of the folks most impacted by policy change in front of those making decisions. And it means teaching our youth how important their voices are in creating their futures.

As your next state representative, I will: 

  • Continue to lift up the voices of our communities to ensure the legislature has a clear picture of who their policies affect 

  • Commit to deep stakeholder work on all the policies I run with our communities, and coach folks on how to share their lived experience for change 

  • Protect our rights to the ballot 


Labor

Living with greedy capitalism has made our systems needlessly complex and deeply inequitable. If profit is the ultimate goal, workers and their rights are secondary (or tertiary). Our unions are on the front lines of organizing for people, and I will continue to support them and the policies they bring to ensure workers have rights and dignity. In 2022, we worked on the collective bargaining policy and although we were disappointed in the reduction of scope, we look forward to continuing to support our brothers and sisters in labor in this fight. We’ve also worked on protections for gig workers and hope to expand those protections in the coming years.

As your next state representative, I will: 

  • Always have an open door for Labor 

  • Fight for policies that protect workers 

  • Continue to support policies to ensure the fundamental right of collective bargaining