In early 2025, a graduate student interested in joining Denver Family Institute (DFI)’s Marriage and Family Therapy training program attended an info session to learn more about our program. In the opening introductions, this individual shared that they were drawn to DFI because they are seeking to “queer their life,” and that DFI seemed like the best possible place for their next step as an aspiring therapist.
In that moment, I felt a glow of joy knowing that DFI had started to become known as a training institute and community that supports not only queer identity but queer-ing. The idea of queering as something you do, not just something you are, has stayed with me. As someone who came out later in life, I’ve been thinking about how often queerness is framed as an identity marker, when in practice it is also a process of learning how to move through systems that were not originally built with you in mind.
This student’s comment wasn’t just about becoming a therapist—It was about imagining an institution as a place where that kind of transformation might be possible.
Coincidentally, while this student was attending this info session at DFI, our leadership team was exploring a big opportunity to integrate Envision:You—a beloved Colorado-based nonprofit focused on improving LGBTQ+ mental health—into DFI. This exploration, and eventual acquisition, of Envision:You required our team and board to re-imagine institutions, power structures, collaboration, decision-making, and to question what may be considered standard or “normal.” I see now that we were collectively beginning the work of queering our institution.
The System Beneath It
Training institutions and nonprofits are often imagined as mission-driven, values-led, and collaborative—and they are. But they are also constrained systems: funding-dependent, shaped by external pressures, and operating within structural incentives. Scarcity, in particular, quietly shapes how organizations define what is possible. Through the exploration and acquisition process, I found myself confronting default assumptions that independence signals legitimacy, and collaboration—let alone consolidation—is seen as a risk. Nonprofit mergers and acquisitions are rare, in part because they challenge the default survival logic of the sector. The integration of Envision:You into DFI was not only a strategic alignment, but a structurally unusual move within that landscape.
When Envision:You’s founder, Steven Haden, first reached out to DFI about this possibility, I remember a scarcity mindset kicking in almost immediately. Would we have to let people go? Do we have the capacity to take this on? Would we retain funders? Would we lose our identity as an organization?
As we moved through the exploration and diligence process, and collaboration strengthened across our team, board, and the team at Envision:You, something began to shift. Trust deepened, and so did our sense of what we could build together.
Throughout this process, the teams at DFI and Envision:You kept returning to a central truth: Partnerships are the foundation of real progress in the LGBTQ+ community and essential to achieving sustainable, lasting impact. This belief made this partnership possible and continues to take shape in this next chapter.
I will always remember the day that I called Steven to let him know that DFI’s board had approved the decision to welcome Envision:You to our organization. I logged off our virtual board meeting, let out a deep exhale, and went for a walk in my neighborhood to make a call I will never forget. When I shared the news, Steven’s voice broke with emotion, relief, and joy. We shared a quiet, tearful moment of disbelief and celebration, a recognition not only of how far we had come, but what would now be possible moving forward.
Now, seven months into this new chapter as a nonprofit, I find myself as energized and fired up for this work as ever, as our team gears up for Pride and our annual Garden Party on May 16. We have all worked and fought hard to arrive at this point, yet it has been the type of work that nourishes and replenishes, which I attribute to the deep alignment and purpose behind this expansion with Envision:You.
What has Changed in Practice
In November 2025, OUT FRONT Magazine covered the Envision:You/DFI story in the We’re Still Serving issue, which uplifted the work being done by Colorado’s queer nonprofits. Our team at DFI was honored to be included alongside these fierce and impactful partner organizations. At the time the issue was published, we were still in the afterglow of the acquisition and adjusting to this new chapter.
What has felt most important in the months since bringing Envision:You into DFI is that the work of “queering” did not stay abstract. This work has shown up in the structure of the organization itself, and in how access, training, collaboration, and participation have begun to shift in real time.
One of the clearest examples is in how we think about training pathways. The same student who once introduced themself at our info session saying they wanted to “queer their life” is now enrolled in our postgraduate Marriage and Family Therapy program. Through the integration with Envision:You, they—and other trainees like them—now have access to expanded learning opportunities that sit outside of traditional clinical training alone, including LGBTQ+ specific professional development pathways and provider-focused education through Envision:You’s programs.
On paper, this might read like an expansion of offerings. In practice, it has meant something more structural and profound: a reshaping of how therapists are equipped in affirming, affinity-based healing modalities. It has meant that queer mental health expertise is not something held at the margins or brought in episodically, but something embedded more directly into the training ecosystem itself.
There have also been quieter shifts inside our organization—less visible, but felt, and just as important. Decision-making happens in a more integrated way across what were once two separate organizational identities. Questions that used to be answered within a single institutional frame are now being held more collaboratively across teams and histories. That has required slowing down in some moments, and rethinking what “efficiency” or “clarity” looks like when more perspectives are genuinely in the room.
When I think about the community and institution that we are today—a version of us that once felt unimaginable—I come back to an aspiring therapist saying they wanted to “queer their life.” Not as an isolated moment, but as an early signal of what was already beginning to shift.
Photo courtesy of Denver Family Institute
