We’re thrilled to close out an already incredible 2019 with an exciting announcement:

New Era Colorado’s board of directors has enthusiastically and unanimously selected Nicole Hensel to be New Era’s next Executive Director!

Over the last several months, we’ve conducted a national, highly competitive search for New Era’s next leader—and Nicole impressed us at every turn. Her sharp, strategic thinking skills gave us energy, and her powerful ideas to maximize New Era’s potential moved us. Most importantly, we could see her deep commitment to equity and inclusion in nearly every answer she gave, and we were impressed by how quickly she built authentic relationships. Nicole’s background in youth empowerment, public policy, education and organizational strategy makes her particularly well-suited to take New Era into our next chapter! (Read more about Nicole here).

We can say with every bit of confidence that Nicole is going to be an incredible Executive Director, and board and staff members alike are so grateful for her leadership and all that’s to come.

Please join us in welcoming Nicole! We invite you to bombard her with congratulatory notes, gifs, flowers, snacks, etc! You can drop her an email here.

Nicole joins our team at an important moment, in the midst of our work to solidify youth power in Colorado. Next year, we need to turnout record numbers of young voters to move our state forward. We’ll fight for bold student debt relief in the 2020 legislative session, and ensure young voters rise to defeat any ballot measure that would threaten the dignity and humanity of our communities. And we’ll continue to weave equity and inclusion throughout our entire architecture so that our team and victories contribute to dismantling oppression in Colorado. With Nicole’s leadership, we can accomplish it all without skipping a beat.

As we welcome Nicole, we want to acknowledge the truly remarkable work of our outgoing Executive Director, Lizzy Stephan. In her nearly four years as executive director and nearly eight years as a staff member, the organization has seen unprecedented growth in our impact, reach, and organizing. Her dedication, vision and deep care for New Era is what allows us to start this next chapter with confidence and momentum. We wish her the best of luck and look forward to seeing how she changes the world next.

Now, a favor to ask: a healthy transition needs healthy support—so please lean in, continue to introduce our work to your networks, and plan to be with us every step of the way in 2020.