The Heading Home Minnesota Funders Collaborative is a member organization comprised of grant makers and intermediaries committed to working together to prevent and end homelessness in Minnesota. The Heading Home Minnesota Funders Collaborative believes that philanthropy is uniquely positioned to help innovate, incubate, and advocate for strategies that will prevent and end homelessness for all Minnesotans. While the Collaborative targets its strategic investments and collaborative efforts at the system level, the impact of its work will be felt by individuals who are close to, or are, experiencing homelessness.Mission: Maximizing philanthropy’s role in preventing and ending homelessness.Vision: Everyone in Minnesota has safe, affordable and stable housing.Goal: Cultivate the conditions to end homelessness.Website: https://headinghomemnfunders.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/HHMNFunders

Community Faculty member teaching graduate courses in nonprofit legislative advocacy through the Masters in Advocacy and Political Leadership program (MAPL). MAPL courses are designed to help students learn how to ethically and effectively bring about social change and influence public policy.

Responsible for launching and directing legislative affairs around issues of social and economic opportunity and human services for low-income communities.The Amherst H. Wilder Foundation is a non-profit social services organization. We combine direct service, research and community initiatives to make progress with and for low-income people in Saint Paul and the surrounding east metro area.Our approach is unique and highly effective. Through research we identify emerging needs facing our community. We use best practices models to develop innovative solutions for service delivery to respond to those needs. And we engage the community through partnerships and outreach to multiply our impact.We provide innovative services and programs to ensure the region’s vulnerable children, families and older adults can thrive.

Direct the legislative advocacy, organizing, and coalition building efforts throughout the 2011 Minnesota state legislative session. Our collective efforts led to the full protection of all homeless funding in a year of deep state budget cuts. Note: The brief tenure was mutually agreed upon hiring. The position was designed for the legislative session only, prior to attending graduate school upon completion.

Responsible for promoting the broad legislative agenda of the Office for Social Justice (immigration, health care, housing, child care, public assistance programs, global warming, criminal justice, living wage, etc), as well as preparing Catholics in social justice committees to become powerful citizen activists in the public arena.

Over the course of 3+ years was promoted from youth worker to family advocate to shelter manager of a 92-family, 500-person family shelter in downtown Minneapolis. Co-created an after-school and summer academic program, developed an ongoing tenant rights & responsibilities training, launched an expansive budgeting & savings program, a new line of service for housing and employment support, provided counseling, regularly led the crisis management response, and managed the day-to-day shelter operations.