About
Our Vision
A just, equitable and high-functioning social safety net that promotes the enduring well-being and dignity of all Denver community members.
Our Mission
Cultivating collaborative spaces of equitable power where Denver community members with lived experience and individuals from business, government, and non-profits come together to: share stories; critically examine housing and homelessness in Denver; and, identify opportunities to amplify what works, avoid redundancies, and address the gaps.
We believe in the dignity of all beings, listening and learning actively with compassion and trust, providing space for previously marginalized voices, and committing to long-term systemic change.
Elevated Denver is a nonprofit addressing homelessness by putting power in the hands of those with lived expertise to design highly responsive, sustainable solutions.
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About the Co-Creators
Johnna Flood, MPH
Johnna started her career in 2003 with OMNI Institute, an evaluation and training nonprofit in Denver, and worked on a wide variety of projects in the realm of public health and early childhood education. While at OMNI, she learned an approach called Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) in which researchers and community members partner in reflective and systemic inquiry. Johnna used CBPR and other methods to engage and learn from marginalized communities, inform program design, and create feedback loops through evaluation and continuous learning.
Relocating to San Francisco in 2010, Johnna started her own consultancy, Community Wise, and took on projects using CBPR as a core method and principle in her work. She also began to cultivate collaborative efforts that required building trust between organizations fighting for the same funding. Building on both of those methods, and adding an approach called Collective Impact, Johnna supported neighborhood organizations get healthier food in food dessert corner stores. She began to speak and train teams on how to effectively drive change nationwide.
While in the Bay Area, Johnna was invited to be a T Lab fellow at Tipping Point Foundation. There she was given an education in human-centered design and 6 months to address a childcare shortage in the Bay Area. Working alongside the West Oakland community, Johnna co-created Gma Village, an innovative friend, family, neighbor childcare service that connected grandmas with low-income parents needing care. The Gma Village went on to serve dozens of low-income families and grandmas in the Bay Area until 2017.
Johnna returned to Denver in 2016, consulting with nonprofits, government agencies and collaboratives locally and nationally, and began her work with Mile High United Way in 2017. There she served as the Senior Director of Evaluation & Learning, leading a team to support strategic and data-informed decision making, continuous learning, and evaluation of initiatives and investments. In 2019, Johnna returned to consulting, supporting organizations to develop client-centered strategies, institute evaluation and learning practices, and to adopt a design-thinking mindset and related tools for continuous improvement.
All of Johnna’s work has pointed to the work of cultivating an Elevated Denver, where she is able to incorporate her passion and knowledge around human-centered design, collective impact and CBPR to lift marginalized voices and create space to collaboratively design compassionate and just systems.
Liane Morrison, MA International Economics
Liane is an economist and nonprofit entrepreneur. She started her career in economic roles at the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. When she had the opportunity to combine policy, politics, and on-the-ground implementation in her home state of Colorado, she veered toward education.
That path led to co-founding and leading a successful, state-wide nonprofit called Great Education Colorado, which remains a thriving organization dedicated to grassroots advocacy to improve education outcomes in our public schools. After 10 years leading Great Ed, Liane wanted to explore the societal factors that impact education, in other words, the social determinants of education.
Liane joined Mile High United Way in 2016 to lead United for Schools. United for Schools (UFS) operates on multiple levels, developing long-term partnerships with schools in three metro Denver school districts to improve student engagement and academic achievement. Under her direction, UFS focused on reducing chronic absenteeism for under-resourced students by providing wrap-around services to families and strengthening the schools’ abilities to effectively connect with families. The COVID-19 pandemic required additional program components, including the creation and implementation of a parent technology training curriculum offered in four languages and extensive economic support for families.
Liane likes to work on a continuum – creating the vision, developing strategy, overseeing its implementation, and then moving continuously along that continuum. She understands that success is often dependent on committed stakeholders at each juncture, and appreciates the energy and intellect of a team willing to do that work to generate results.
Advisory Board
Bill Fulton, The Civic Canopy
Dindi Gaines, Adams County
Aaron Duke, Consultant and Product Expert
Aubrey Wilde, Colorado Coalition for the Homeless
Elise Matatall, Denver Department of Public Health and Environment
Hamilton Nikoloff, Lived Expert & Colorado Coalition for the Homeless
Jasmine White, Lived Expert & Denver Housing Authority
Lindi Sinton, Volunteers of America
Lisa Betchey, Consultant and Content Expert
Margie Morris, Consultant and Content Expert
Myra Nagy, Lived Expert & Peer Producer for Elevated Denver
Don Burnes, The Burnes Institute for Poverty Research at CCLP & Author [Board Emeritus]
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