Nuestro equipo
Silen (they/he)
Co-fundador y Defensor del Apoyo de Pares
Esta es la descripción de su miembro del equipo. Use este espacio para escribir una breve descripción del rol y las responsabilidades de esta persona, o agregue una breve biografía con un resumen de antecedentes. También es una gran oportunidad para resaltar cómo esta persona es un activo para el equipo.
Lucrecia (she/her/ella)
Co-fundador y Defensor del Apoyo de Pares
Esta es la descripción de su miembro del equipo. Use este espacio para escribir una breve descripción del rol y las responsabilidades de esta persona, o agregue una breve biografía con un resumen de antecedentes. También es una gran oportunidad para resaltar cómo esta persona es un activo para el equipo.
Geena Rupp (ella/ella)
Co-fundador y Defensor del Apoyo Organizacional
Geena es una esposa y madre local con experiencia vivida de abuso de sustancias que interrumpen la vida, trauma, diagnóstico psiquiátrico, sistemas judiciales locales, programas judiciales de resolución de problemas y más. Trabaja incesantemente para vivir una vida equilibrada adoptando varios modelos/programas de recuperación y enfoques alternativos que sanan el cuerpo, la mente y el espíritu. Geena continúa levantándose de lo que parecía un "estado aparentemente sin esperanza" aprendiendo a aceptar las curvas del universo con las personas que ama. Se ha dado cuenta de que todos se recuperan de manera diferente y que no existe un modelo único para todos cuando se trata de curación. En lugar de centrarse en lo que solo funciona para ella, se esfuerza por encontrar alternativas para que cualquiera pueda encontrar un camino de curación y que su viaje sea de mínima resistencia.
Geena fue invitada a unirse al consejo rector de este proyecto de expansión y actualmente se desempeña como defensora organizacional de Yarrow Collective, cuyas funciones principales son ayudar a suavizar el aspecto organizacional de este colectivo emergente y en constante cambio.
Ashleigh (she/her)
Co-fundador y Defensor del Apoyo de Pares
Esta es la descripción de su miembro del equipo. Use este espacio para escribir una breve descripción del rol y las responsabilidades de esta persona, o agregue una breve biografía con un resumen de antecedentes. También es una gran oportunidad para resaltar cómo esta persona es un activo para el equipo.
Melissa (she/her)
Melissa is a long time Fort Collins resident. Having attended elementary through high school in Poudre School District she feels rooted in and committed to supporting her hometown. She is the Mother of 4 children ranging in age 7-17. Some of her most valuable education has come through her lived experiences. She is passionate about creating opportunities for underrepresented identities to come together to practice embodied, compassionate, integration while in community. As a multiracial woman, Melissa continues to grapple with identity concepts. As she practices welcoming the many parts of her to coexist she feels alignment and peace. Sitting in circle with Melissa feels soft and centered. She blends her 7 years of experience sitting in and facilitating community peer to peer support circles, Art of Groups facilitator training and Xinachtli facilitator training. She is on the journey to remember and practice her lineages medicine. Currently Melissa is supporting and facilitating ECHO, youth alternatives to suicide circle. She co-founded and co-facilitates Unity in Community, a space for BIPOC and multiracial community members to gather and offer non-clinical peer support. She offers her time weekly as a community member to Poudre Global Academy’s high school mindfulness circle. Melissa loves to collect books, plants and rocks. Melissa enjoys coffee, a great playlist and deep conversations.
Youth & BIPOC Program Coordinator
Kyle (he/him)
Harm Reduction Coordinator & Re-Entry Navigator
Kyle is an advocate for social justice in the criminal justice system, drawing from personal lived experience within the prison industrial complex and recovery from substance use. A confident team player and strong leader, Kyle brings more than three years of experience working with individuals navigating Substance Use Disorder and the challenges of re-entering society post-incarceration.
As a dedicated member of the Yarrow Collective, Kyle focuses on supporting the re-entry population by providing essential resources, a compassionate listening ear, and a dependable shoulder to lean on. Motivated by his own journey toward freedom—both physical and mental—Kyle is committed to empowering others to achieve their own transformative liberation.
In his free time he enjoys lifting weights, playing basketball, and hanging out with friends and family.
Mia (they/them)
Peer Support Program Coordinator
Mia is a second generation Chicanx, non-binary person from south Texas. They moved to Fort Collins to pursue college in 2019 and completed a Bachelor’s Degree in environmental horticulture and ethnic studies at the end of 2023. Mia joined the Yarrow Collective after becoming a part of the Latine and BIPoC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) community in Fort Collins through participating in local events and facilitating Unity in Community. They are passionate about creating spaces that are comfortable for Queer folks of color that foster liberatory conversations and action. Mia is passionate about celebrating queer experiences, encouraging community building, centering healing through cultural connection, and cultivating vital plant knowledge. They facilitate a variety of groups for youth and intergenerational audiences.
Zalena (they/she)
Family Services Peer Advocate
Zalena Ferguson (they/she) is a queer, "highly sensitive," and neurodivergent individual who has navigated chronic thoughts of suicide since childhood. After experiencing hospitalization due to suicidality in 2016, Zalena became deeply committed to creating spaces where humans can express thoughts of suicide without fear of punishment or repercussion. Their journey has also been shaped by profound experiences with traumatic loss and grief, which have fueled a passion for grief work that honors the complexities of loss and the need for communal healing.
In their daily life, Zalena contends with challenges stemming from experiences commonly associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety, depression, and chronic post-traumatic stress disorder. However, they choose not to pursue formal diagnoses, instead focusing on self-understanding and community care.
Zalena is a fierce advocate for the abolition of systems that perpetuate racism, misogyny, ableism, and homophobia. They believe that thoughts of suicide often reflect systemic oppression rather than individual "mental illness" or abnormality. Since 2018, they have been actively involved in peer-based mental health services, with a particular passion for creating accessible, peer-run, and holistic alternatives to traditional mental health care.
Maggie (she/her/ella)
Harm Reduction Events Coordinator
Maggie is a Chicana and has been rooted in the beautiful landscapes of Colorado for the last 44 years.
She is a proud mother of six and grandmother to eleven wonderful grandchildren. She is passionate about fostering inclusion, mindfulness, and respect in her life and work. She dedicates her time to supporting the Yarrow Collective's mission while embracing life’s adventures- including her love for cooking, reading, dancing, hiking, and crocheting.
She faced and has overcome many challenges in her life; including substance misuse, mental health struggles, suicidality, domestic violence, the removal of her children during a period of unwellness, and childhood trauma. She deeply understands the complex, non-linear path to healing, striving to walk with others on their own paths. She is a co-founder and co-facilitator of Unity in Community, a space for BIPOC and multiracial community members to gather and engage non-clinical peer support.
Peer Support Group Facilitators
Alison (they/them) one of Yarrow's co-founders, is a neurodivergent, disabled queer person who has experienced extreme states and emotional distress since childhood. Since a traumatic psychiatric incarceration in 1987, one of their lifelong goals has been fighting for a more accessible humane world for folks with extreme states, mental health struggles, disabilities, neurodivergence, and other marginalized identities. They have worked for over 2 decades as an individual advocate and a systemic activist for folks who our system has left behind such as those who are: disabled, neurodivergent, unhoused, low-income, LGBTQ+, and more. As their physical disabilities have worsened throughout the years, they have become a fierce advocate for changes in the way our medical system treats folks with chronic pain/illness, particularly those with marginalized identities. They are proud to be a co-founder of Yarrow’s Chronic Illness and Disability Peer Support Group and also co facilitate the in person Alternatives to Suicide group(and occasionally the virtual). Being involved on the ground floor of Yarrow Collective has fulfilled their lifelong dream of creating a robust peer-led alternative to our traditional mental health system.
Rocky (he/him) is an artist, theater nerd, and most certainly; a Storyteller. Through his struggle with suicidality in himself and the people around him, he's found hope, family, and purpose. He spends much of his time writing stories, exploring emotions and fascinating concepts from every corner of the human experience.
Cynical and sarcastic, Rocky continues to bring the stories of strugglers to light through the peer support movement. He dreams to create spaces for people of every creative corner to tell their stories.
Rocky helps facilitate Yarrow's ECHO teen group and is a Youth Advocate supporting our youth programming.
TJ (he/they) is a passionate 18-year-old nonbinary individual who strives to help their communities. He has worked with the local LGBTQ+ youth in Fort Collins as well as supporting teen mental health. They are neurodivergent and have faced suicidality throughout much of their life. TJ finds creativity as a helpful outlet in which to cope with their struggles, such as through poetry and drawing. He believes his purpose is to help others who struggle and to advocate for others' needs as well as their own. They are a facilitator for the teen support group, ECHO.
Sam (she/they) is a white, queer person who has experienced psychiatric labels, life interrupting trauma, and coercive treatment spaces. Their path to well-being has been rooted deeply in spiritual and community healing and organizing practices. She is passionate about holding space for individuals to create their own meaning and understanding of suffering and committed to the importance of autonomy, options, and choice in mental health treatment spaces. As an Alt2Su facilitator, they aim to create a space where all people can show up as their full selves and be supported in community without judgment. Sam is on our ECHO teen and Alt2Su adult group teams.
Xander (they/them) is a co-founder and facilitator of the chronic illness and disability support group, where they are pushing back on the narrative that being disabled means a small, isolated life. Xander is an abolitionist facilitator, writer, potter, dancer, story collector, body worker and spiritual and relationship coach. They most love to work in the intersections of disability, queerness and spirituality. They have been living with chronic pain and physical challenges since they were young, which contributed to them repressing their anger, sadness and pain, trying to hold up a life where they would be seen as capable and viable, at all costs. Eventually their body and mind were in an untenable state of pain and anxiety, which led them to come back to their body and feelings, and start to shift long-held emotional patterns. Xander has been learning what it means to feel capable and valuable, while recognizing and tending their real challenges. This hasn't always come easy for them, and they love the mutual healing that can come from spaces where people can be honest about their full range of feelings and experiences (including the pain that is so often hidden).
My name is Shaka and I'm very excited to be joining effort with the Yarrow Collective. I've been brought into the team as a harm reduction peer facilitator. As a QTBIPoC adoptee, raised in Colorado, who is now a single momma with two children of my own, the concept of peer-led community connection is extremely important to me. I hold a degree in Social Work from CSU and ample first hand experience with systemic colonialization and oppression, and their symptoms. I feel very privileged and prepared to be able to participate in this vital kind community care and harm reduction in action.
My life time spent growing and learning, in community with others throughout the state of Colorado, [especially deep in the healing medicine of the forests and mountains] has given me a plethora of real life, feet-on-the-ground experience to excel in this role. I look forward to learning from everyone around the intentional vision, here at Yarrow. It's about Our collective health!I'm privileged to be in this position to serve in community, on the ancestral lands of the Tséstho’e (Cheyenne), Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, hinono’eino’ biito’owu’ (Arapaho), and Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute) Nations; aka Fort Collins
Destiny (she/her) is a proud queer, neurodivergent Latina who has faced a wide range of adversity throughout her life. Her upbringing in Texas provided her with a strong appreciation for culture and family. Living with chronic anxiety and depression, suicidal ideation, and BPD - she has continued to achieve her goals as a first-generation student, earning a Master of Public Health degree, and competing in sports where she can utilize her grit (wrestling, BMX, powerlifting). She strives to be an example of strength for underrepresented identities and those who feel like their mind works against them. She has lived in Fort Collins since 2021 and finds joy in the open space of Colorado nature, the changing seasons, biking, and community.
Destiny lives by the saying, "you make mistakes, but your mistakes never make you". Surviving a difficult past, Destiny is filled with sympathy, compassion, understanding, and hope. She believes that we all have a meaning in this life and change is possible if you want it. Destiny values love and respect - if people can't remember her, they'll remember love. She currently helps to uplift and share youth voice surrounding topics like mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health by offering an open third space away from school and home to pursue hobbies/interests and build community at the Teen Activity Center (TAC 212).
Destiny supports with Yarrow Collective's new youth program Eclipse at TAC 212, and will be supporting with youth programming in the school district.
Nuestro consejo rector
Shannon Hughes, PhD (she/her)
Socio Académico
Shannon es profesora adjunta en CSU en la Escuela de Trabajo Social y dirige el Laboratorio de Alternativas para la Salud Mental y la Curación. Su laboratorio enfatiza alternativas holísticas, centradas en la persona y basadas en pares basadas en la síntesis de evidencia de investigación, pensamiento innovador y asociación comunitaria. Ayudar a formar el Colectivo Yarrow ha sido un proyecto emocionante con un gran potencial para desarrollar nuevas alternativas no clínicas y no coercitivas en el condado de Larimer y Colorado. Shannon ha sido una apasionada de las alternativas a los sistemas medicalizados de atención durante más de una década y participa activamente en el apoyo a los movimientos de apoyo entre pares en Colorado con un interés particular en el desarrollo de relevo entre pares y otras alternativas psicosociales a la hospitalización para personas que experimentan crisis o situaciones extremas. estados En su tiempo libre, a Shannon le gusta leer, estar en la naturaleza, viajar, hacerse la manicura y la pedicura y pasar el rato con amigos.
Board of Directors
Jess Stohlmann-Rainey (she/her)
Socio Académico
Shannon es profesora adjunta en CSU en la Escuela de Trabajo Social y dirige el Laboratorio de Alternativas para la Salud Mental y la Curación. Su laboratorio enfatiza alternativas holísticas, centradas en la persona y basadas en pares basadas en la síntesis de evidencia de investigación, pensamiento innovador y asociación comunitaria. Ayudar a formar el Colectivo Yarrow ha sido un proyecto emocionante con un gran potencial para desarrollar nuevas alternativas no clínicas y no coercitivas en el condado de Larimer y Colorado. Shannon ha sido una apasionada de las alternativas a los sistemas medicalizados de atención durante más de una década y participa activamente en el apoyo a los movimientos de apoyo entre pares en Colorado con un interés particular en el desarrollo de relevo entre pares y otras alternativas psicosociales a la hospitalización para personas que experimentan crisis o situaciones extremas. estados En su tiempo libre, a Shannon le gusta leer, estar en la naturaleza, viajar, hacerse la manicura y la pedicura y pasar el rato con amigos.
Nze Okoronta (they/them)
Socio Académico
Shannon es profesora adjunta en CSU en la Escuela de Trabajo Social y dirige el Laboratorio de Alternativas para la Salud Mental y la Curación. Su laboratorio enfatiza alternativas holísticas, centradas en la persona y basadas en pares basadas en la síntesis de evidencia de investigación, pensamiento innovador y asociación comunitaria. Ayudar a formar el Colectivo Yarrow ha sido un proyecto emocionante con un gran potencial para desarrollar nuevas alternativas no clínicas y no coercitivas en el condado de Larimer y Colorado. Shannon ha sido una apasionada de las alternativas a los sistemas medicalizados de atención durante más de una década y participa activamente en el apoyo a los movimientos de apoyo entre pares en Colorado con un interés particular en el desarrollo de relevo entre pares y otras alternativas psicosociales a la hospitalización para personas que experimentan crisis o situaciones extremas. estados En su tiempo libre, a Shannon le gusta leer, estar en la naturaleza, viajar, hacerse la manicura y la pedicura y pasar el rato con amigos.
Mary Beth Swanson (she/her)
Treasurer
Mary Beth Swanson is currently the director of The Willow Collective, a non profit mental health agency serving young children and their families. As a social worker for 25+ years, she is committed to social justice and creating a world where kindness rules. Mary Beth has two young adult sons, two dogs, and a kitty.