Amidst a booming entrepreneurial ecosystem and unprecedented growth, Denver is home to a diverse community that is experiencing the changes in vastly different ways.

Amanda Moore McBride, dean of DU's Graduate School of Social Work, will moderate a panel of community leaders and experts. Together, we will connect policy wins and possibilities to community values, drawing on examples such as the Caring 4 Denver initiative and the tiny home villages for people experiencing homelessness.

We will celebrate the success of the 2019 legislative session, examine the status of growth and policies from diverse perspectives, and debate social ideas that, if made real, can ensure a healthy and prosperous future for all Coloradoans.

Moderator:

Amanda Moore McBride, PhD, is the Morris Endowed Dean and professor of the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Denver. McBride is an internationally recognized expert in civic and community engagement. Her scholarship focuses on ways to promote engagement through education, programs and policy, addressing issues of inclusion. Prior research has focused on national service, service learning and international volunteering across nearly 100 publications.

McBride is a leader in the field of community engagement in higher education specifically, convening conferences and writing on the topic for the Chronicle of Higher Education and The Huffington Post. Prior consultancies include the United States Corporation for National and Community Service, the United Nations Volunteer Program and the Social Science Research Council. She has organized more than 20 conferences, including recent think tanks on the rise of social innovation in higher education.

McBride joined DU in 2016 after being affiliated with Washington University in St. Louis for 23 years, where she was the Bettie Bofinger Brown associate professor at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work and executive director of the Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement.

Panelists:

Cole Chandler is an organizer, activator, and community builder who serves as the Director of the Colorado Village Collaborative--a start up non-profit that focuses on providing transformational housing, community development, and public education and advocacy as levers towards solving the housing and homelessness crisis. An ordained minister, and a member of the Denver Catholic Worker Community, a moral commitment led Cole into his work among poor and marginalized people, where he found himself to have become a part of a community whose struggle became his own.

Cole works with directly affected people to implement and advocate for people first solutions to our biggest structural problems. His work with the Collaborative earned a 2018 "Eagle Award" from Housing Colorado, a 2018 "Fair Housing Leadership" Award from the Metro Denver Fair Housing Center, and in 2019 Cole was named to Denverite's "Who's Next: Housing" list of 14 rising stars in the Denver housing arena.

Representative Leslie Herod (HD-8) was elected in 2016 as the first LGBTQ African American in the General Assembly, while receiving the highest number of votes of any candidate running in a contested election. She serves as the Chair of the House Finance Committee, Vice Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, and Vice Chair of the Committee on Legal Services. Rep. Herod also chairs the Colorado Black Democratic Legislative Caucus and the Arts Caucus.

Since her election in 2016, Herod has sent 52 bills to the Governor’s desk, marshaling through numerous pieces of legislation addressing criminal justice reform, mental health & substance abuse, renewable energy, youth homelessness, and civil rights protections. Her legislative agenda underscores her commitment to improving the lives of all Coloradans, especially those caught in the cycle of poverty or mired in the criminal justice system.