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Hal Benninger is the Cooperative Community Organizer at CCW. They lead outreach efforts to engage worker-owner candidates and employee ownership conversion leads, contributing to the growth of a robust cooperative ecosystem in Colorado. As the first point of contact for Colorado co-ops, Hal also oversees the peer network, fostering collaboration and knowledge-sharing among co-ops in the region.

Their upbringing in New York City shaped their love of and commitment to inclusive, diverse, community-driven spaces. They are passionate about the worker cooperative model as a powerful way to practice our skills in creating mutual support, strong relationships, and equitable futures for all.

Hal brings a diverse background to CCW, with experience in human resources and nutrition education—fields that focus on nurturing people’s wellbeing. Fluent in French and Spanish, Hal enjoys connecting with individuals from diverse backgrounds and walks of life.

Patrick leads CCW'S resource development and also co-directs CCW's community-owned and benefitting real estate project, which helps cultural legacy small businesses avoid gentrification-driven displacement by owning and controlling their real estate. 

Patrick joined CCW in June 2022 after nearly 21 years at The Denver Foundation, where he directed the Foundation's Strengthening Neighborhoods and Economic Opportunity grantmaking programs. A passionate advocate for equitable economic systems change, Patrick was a member of the community network that laid the groundwork for CCW's founding in 2017.

Patrick, an attorney by training, worked for many years representing adults experiencing homelessness in New York City before coming to Colorado in 2000. He is thrilled to have the opportunity to work with the committed staff and inspiring community partners who are building a more equitable Metro Denver economy with CCWB.

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Davey Thatcher (they/them) is CCW's Director of Communications and works to amplify the organization's work through community-centered storytelling. They work to center equity, accountability, and collaboration throughout the organization's internal and external communication processes. Davey approaches their work through an anti-oppression and trauma-informed lens, co-creating stories, narratives, and visual content that centers the communities at the heart of our work.

Before working at CCW, Davey spent over a decade growing their own communications company, creating award-winning multimedia content and communication strategies to help progressive causes and organizations tell the right stories at the right time, reaching the people who matter most.  They also helped found Emergent Media Collective, a wonderful community of queer and BIPOC media professionals.

Michelle leads the anchor engagement strategy.  She works with individuals at place-based institutions to help craft a local procurement, local hiring, and local investment strategy. Her engagement with Community Wealth Building dates back to 2014 when she planned a Community Wealth Building conference that led to the creation of the CWB Network. From 2016-2018, she chaired the CWB Design Team which ultimately led to the hiring of the amazing leader, Yessica Holguin! 

Michelle comes to this work from a 30+ year career in the nonprofit sector post completing a year and a half of law school. Her experience spans frontline staff positions to executive director, consulting work, and a ten-year stint with the Anschutz Family Foundation

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Salvador works on our Democratizing Ownership strategy, reaching traditionally underserved communities and supporting the creation of worker-owned and resident-owned enterprises. 

He grew up in the West Colfax neighborhood and has been involved in social justice campaigns organizing for food justice, food access, and food sovereignty. He is a student of the cooperative movement's theory, history, and modern applications.  He sees the co-op model as a means of building an equitable economy that encompasses workers, community, and the environment. 

Salvador spends time in the community learning about the issues members face and how to best support them in the process of becoming worker-owners of businesses. In his downtime, Salvador enjoys listening to music, health training, and spending time with friends and family.

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Hilda Gehrke is a social leadership coach, facilitator, and cooperative developer who migrated from Chihuahua, Mexico in 1996, making Colorado her home since then. She graduated with a B.S. in Psychology from Regis University and completed her training as an Ontological Coach from Newfield Network, INC in 2017. She has obtained several certifications as a facilitator and as a cooperative developer.

Hilda is actively involved in developing voices within the Latinx community. She is married and is a proud mom of 2 children, Brandon, who graduated from CU in 2023, and Mariana, who is currently serving in The U.S. Air Force, as well as a proud “abuela” of 3 grandchildren. Hilda enjoys hiking in the mountains, sunsets,and reading a nice book, andshe  considers herself a “foodie”.

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Paul leads our Democratizing Ownership strategy, reaching traditionally underserved communities and supporting the creation of worker-owned and resident-owned enterprises.

Originally from New Mexico, Paul first witnessed the power of cooperatives during graduate school at the University of Oregon, where he lived and served as president of the Student Cooperative Association. Paul has extensive experience in cooperative development and support, including co-founding Queen City Cooperative, a limited-equity housing cooperative, and the Colorado Solidarity Fund, a grassroots investment club focused on locally-owned cooperative businesses.

​Paul’s business background includes copywriting, video storytelling, and digital marketing strategy. He has helped place-based organizations, city agencies, nonprofits and small businesses achieve their business goals through strategically executed content. He brings careful thinking, a vision for social equity, and inspired energy to each project.

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Michaela co-leads our Democratizing Ownership strategy, which engages traditionally underserved communities in developing worker and resident-owned enterprises—her focus is on employee ownership conversions to worker cooperatives.

Michaela became passionate about worker ownership and cooperatives at the outset of Occupy Wall Street while pursuing her M.S. in Organizational Change Management from the New School. Splitting her time between the classroom and protesting in the streets, she had a real-life praxis of shared decision-making, group process, and the power of centering equity, anti-racism, and compassion in change-making.

Dedicated to working towards a more equitable world, she completed an internship at Praxis Consulting Group in Philadelphia, researching leadership development programs and succession planning for nonprofits, worked at the Democracy at Work Institute as the Leadership Development and Training Coordinator, and was the Director of Cooperative Development at the Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance. She spent five years as a Board member of the Mariposa Food Co-op in Philadelphia and dreams of opening a food co-op in her neighborhood of North Park Hill

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Marcela Gaete Fuentes is an experienced Community and Small Business Outreach and Operations Specialist. She is fueled by a genuine passion for helping people flourish through access to opportunities, resources, and wealth. With over a decade of hands-on experience in community engagement and outreach, Marcela possesses a unique arsenal of skills tailored to uplifting individuals and projects.

Originally from the vibrant city of Santiago, Chile, Marcela embraces a deep appreciation for diverse cultures, traditions, languages, and customs, underlining her advocacy for global inclusivity and understanding. It's all about the connections for Marcela—whether forging meaningful relationships, fostering community ties, or nurturing her growth journey.

​Currently juggling her passion for helping others with pursuing her bachelor's degree in communications, Marcela finds boundless inspiration in her two amazing children – her ultimate life project. When she's not busy changing the world, Marcela delights in spending her free time surrounded by the beauty of nature, grooving to her favorite tunes, and catching up with old and new friends over coffee or a stroll. So, let's connect, grow, and make a difference together!

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Kimberly Bonner is the Community Wealth Building’s Small Business Development Manager. She provides technical assistance to BIPOC entrepreneurs, primarily in the skilled trades and catering industries. 

Kimberly served as intellectual property legal counsel for tech firms at the beginning of her career. Eventually, she became the Executive Director of a national nonprofit intellectual property resource center based in Maryland, the Center for Intellectual Property. She has helped build and scale franchise systems and family-owned businesses for the past decade.  Most recently, she has worked with local governments and nonprofits around the U.S. to aid small, historically underserved businesses rebound from the devastation of the pandemic.

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Karen leads our Small Business strategy, working with local business owners to provide the resources and support they need to maintain a sustainable level of growth for their enterprises and get connected with new market opportunities.

While studying at the University of Colorado, Karen first got involved with community organizing and social justice work. Karen brings  30 years of experience as an educator, entrepreneur, facilitator, coach, and consultant. She has worked with women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and neurodivergent business owners, helping them to grow and scale their businesses to create more impact, equity,  and freedom using an inclusive, justice-based framework. Karen has also worked with leaders in the nonprofit and education sectors, supporting them by bringing a more human-centric and values-driven approach to their leadership. Karen has owned and operated four businesses, has been an educator for people ages one through adults, and has worked both in and with nonprofits.

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Yessica is CCW’s co-founder.  She is responsible for leading the organization and carrying out the vision. Prior to CCW, Yessica was a Country Director at Project Gettysburg-León (PGL), an international sister-city organization that works to empower Nicaraguans to be the leaders of their own development.  Yessica served the United States as a Small Business Development Specialist in the city of Estelí in northern Nicaragua through the Peace Corps.  Before leaving the country for six years, she worked at the Denver Scholarship Foundation, where she was among the initial staff that helped design the college and financial aid advising program in Denver high schools. .

Yessica grew up in the Swansea neighborhood in Denver and has done grassroots community organizing with immigrant groups and low-income communities across the Denver Metro area since 2000.  ​She has dedicated her life to empowering disenfranchised communities to break the cycle of poverty through education and entrepreneurship.  She enjoys running, reading, and spending time with friends and family while drinking coffee.

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Cec Ortiz’s has dedicated her life to working with Latino communities fighting against and addressing structural and institutionalized inequities. Her passion for this work stems from when she was young, watching and learning from her mother, who helped Mexican immigrant families integrate and settle into their small farming community in rural Colorado.

Cec’s career blessed her with opportunities to focus on community building and economic opportunity, from co-founding a rural healthcare clinic for low-income families, advocating for women’s reproductive rights, serving as executive director of Mi Casa Women’s Resource Center, serving the state of Colorado as an appointee of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and as the Deputy Director of the City of Denver’s Office of Economic Development.

Cec now serves as a Senior Fellow of the Community Democracy Workshop, a team of national experts working to improve the practices of democracy in addressing community issues in direct partnership with community members. Cec is also an advisor to the Latino Community Foundation of Colorado on issues that grow the power of Latino communities across Colorado.

Cec is the daughter of Marcial and Rosario Ortiz who emigrated from Mexico to rural Colorado in the early 1900s. She is the proud mother of two sons and lives with her life partner in Erie, Colorado.

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Jeff Shanahan, founder of Shanahan Development, began his career in real estate development in 2010. Since then, Shanahan Development has gained extensive experience in developing affordable housing projects, particularly focusing on homeownership condominiums, townhomes, and income-restricted housing across the Denver metro area. As an innovator in the financing of affordable multi-family housing, Shanahan Development has developed a reputation for navigating the complicated financing structures governing affordable housing development, and successfully deploying the proceeds of these structures to build high-quality workforce housing.

Shanahan Development has entitled nearly $300M worth of multifamily, hospitality, retail, and public transit projects, which are either under construction or completed.

Asia Dorsey is a midwife to the food movement. Ear to the soil, she heeds the instruction of mineral, microbial, and botanical beings using her gift of pattern recognition as a published and very petty nutrition educator at Bones, Bugs and Botany.

Asia institutionalizes the pattern language of the land as a developer of vibrant organizations that perpetuate cultures of reciprocity as an organizational ecologist with Regenerate Change.  Asia’s unique approach to facilitation, conflict resolution, and developing vibrant food and sustainability organizations bridges deficiencies in imagination with practical, ancestral tools for building resilient cultures  and fostering radical self discovery through collective creativity and play.

Like the mending of bodies and ecologies, Asia heals historical relationships of injustice as a reparationist with  www.reparations4slavery, the Denver Black Reparations Council, and a board member of the Center for Community Wealth. You can find her balancing embodiment with botanical chaos and co-creating the Petty Herbalist Podcast  helping her people to rise together in power and step into the wholeness that is their birthright. Be in inquiry with Asia and her team at  www.regeneratechange.com.

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Kayvan Khalatbari is an entrepreneur and advocate whose work focuses on rural food system development, the preservation of historic buildings, and the creation of wealth development opportunities for young people. He joined the board of CCW because its mission aligns directly with his work.

After a lengthy career in the cannabis industry, operating a comedy production company and arts magazine, and many other ventures across the country, today Kayvan largely focuses his time in Trinidad, CO and Raton, NM, where he has redeveloped a dozen historic properties totaling more than 100,000 SF. These projects include a theater, dry goods stores, hotel, church, train depot, and more. Together these properties house nearly 30 small businesses that employ approximately 100 people. Kayvan owns a farm with his brother in New Mexico that provides fresh produce and greens to schools, senior centers, and rural markets across northern New Mexico, as well as a small grocery store in Raton. 

Kayvan’s history of entrepreneurship and civic engagement is an asset to CCW’s community work. Through his association with CCW’s founders and his exposure to our mission, Kayvan was inspired to convert Sexy Pizza, his successful four-location pizzeria, into an employee-owned company.

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