As a component of Mayor Michael B. Hancock’s Equity Platform, the Agency for Human Rights and Community Partnerships (HRCP) is launching a new Race and Social Justice Initiative that will prepare city agencies and employees to identify, evaluate and address the economic and racial impact of new city programs, initiative and policies. This initiative would make addressing racial disparities a priority for the city and provide employees with citywide standards and tools to integrate racial equity into their daily responsibilities, interactions with community, investments and projects.
In the next 6-12 months, our city will be embarking on a strategic planning process to outline keys strategies to guide the Race & Social Justice Initiative in Denver that will include developing a Race & Social Justice Inclusion Academy and racial equity inclusion taskforce. We are prototyping (piloting) two departments to begin creating the foundational framework to inform how we should create our racial equity tool kit in Denver and develop a citywide Race & Social Justice Inclusion Academy. Our academy will be a train-the trainer model used to blend racial equity tool kit application, multiple modalities of learning platforms and problem solving approaches for city employees to identify areas of practice in multidisciplinary teams to infuse racial equity in our city systems.
Kim Desmond works under the umbrella of the HRCP, as the Director to the Denver Office on Women & Families, in addition to serving as the Staff Liaison to two Mayoral appointed commissions (Denver Women’s Commission and African American Commission). Kim’s job responsibilities include: Preparing policy proposals and recommendations to the Mayor in partnership with commissioners, providing strategic oversight and execution of annual goals, building collaborative partnerships to develop internal and external facing equity initiatives to support economic mobility for marginalized communities, and co-planning community convening’s to move programmatic work into action. She is also the coordinating and development lead for the Race and Social Justice Initiative.
Tariana Navas-Nieve is the Director of Cultural Affairs for Denver Arts & Venues, which is the City and County of Denver agency responsible for the city’s cultural affairs and publicly owned venues. The agency operates some of the region’s most renowned facilities, including Red Rocks Park & Amphitheatre, the Denver Performing Arts Complex, Colorado Convention Center, Denver Coliseum and McNichols Civic Center Building. Tariana has over 23 years of experience in community building through the arts, diversity, inclusiveness and equity work, grant-making, non-profit and project management, museum work, and communications, most recently as Public Information Manager for the Gold Line commuter rail transit line, which along with the line to Denver International Airport, is part of the largest transportation project in the United States. She also served as Curator of Hispanic and American Indian Art at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center during their 28.4-million-dollar expansion project. She is also supporting the development of the Race and Social Justice Initiative.