As the new Director of the Denver Office of Strategic Partnerships, Miriam Peña works as the city’s liaison to the nonprofit sector. Peña began her nonprofit career as an intern 11 years ago at the Colorado Progressive Coalition (CPC), a public policy advocacy nonprofit. By the time she left the organization this spring, she had held every position in the organization including grass roots fundraising coordinator and development director before her promotion to Executive Director in 2010. Her current challenge is to quickly learn the inner workings of local government so that she can more effectively collaborate and elevate the 3,400 nonprofits that exist in Denver.
Peña says that her decision to enroll in the EMBA program as part of the first Denver cohort was the best decision she’s ever made. She says it has helped her think of new ways to do nonprofit work and kept her completely engaged while planning her transition to her new position.
Miriam Pena
“It’s really true that you use what you learn that weekend on the following Monday. More and more I’m convinced that nonprofit executives need to have more business training, after all they are running businesses with very important missions. It’s definitely changed my perspective on things and the way I go about solving issues. I’ve loved every second of the EMBA program.”
Born in Juarez, Mexico, Peña moved to Colorado as a baby and was the first in her family to attend college earning a Bachelor’s degree in Public Policy and Communications at the University of Denver. In addition to her work at CPC, she has served on numerous nonprofit organizations’ boards including Metro Denver Partners, New Era Colorado, Rights for all People, Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, Alliance for a Just Society, and El Centro Humanitario (Humanitarian Center for Day Laborers).
She co-hosts a weekly talk show, “Weekend Wisdom” in Denver and was appointed to the Denver Women’s Commission as chair of the Public Policy committee where she served for a year. In August of 2013, she became foster mother to three little girls.
Bill Bottom’s Team Development course has been one of the most useful applications of the curriculum for Peña. “We had a co-Executive Director model that we worked to restructure to a single Executive Director model. That type of restructure required a lot of trust, and the team assessments were very helpful in effective change management with my staff and board.”
She applied lessons learned in Microeconomics and cost accounting to CPC’s grant acceptance policies. “If someone offered us a grant to do a specific thing with specific outcomes that didn’t feel like the adequate price, I was able to create tools to calculate at what point it might cost us more to do it than it would to reject the money. Non-profits hardly ever reject money, but it helped us be more efficient, true to our mission and avoid killing my staff for a small amount of money.”
As one of 10 women in a class of 50, she would like to see more women in the EMBA program. “I think about how many opportunities for learning we are missing when there aren’t more women in the program. Different life experiences, perspectives and ability to take on different roles are what make women’s contributions unique. More and more women control the finances in the home and are the breadwinners. When we miss what they’re doing, we’re missing a lot.”
Peña’s last day at CPC was March 31st, and her first day with the city was April 1st. Since then she has also partnered on the formation of a nonprofit consulting LLC. She is excited for the new opportunity in local government, where she can bring nonprofit, for-profit and government together for effective cross-sector collaboration. Miriam Peña is just getting started.
Profile by Tanya Yatzeck (EMBA 43), a freelance writer and Senior Project Manager in Information Technology at Washington University.
Image: Weekend Wisdom’s Facebook page
