Sean Dollard
Priority Areas I Work In:
Affordable Housing | Community Solutions | Food Access and Security
Sean (he/him) has been a Program Officer since 2020, after moving from our Communications team to the Community Impact and Investment team. Before joining the Foundation, Sean worked in family advocacy and supportive housing and volunteered with youth experiencing homelessness. Each step in his journey provided different perspectives on the intersections of housing justice, racial justice, and health equity. Sean highlights his experience as a community leader within Palm Health Foundation’s Healthier Together Lake Worth, a place-based health equity initiative in South Florida, as foundational to sparking a journey to the Colorado Health Foundation.
In addition to being a much-beloved presence at the Foundation’s Denver office, Sean is deeply connected to and invested in communities across Colorado. He spends most of his time outside of the office and on the road getting to know Coloradans and building authentic relationships by listening to community members about what communities want for themselves.
“I believe in leveraging all Foundation resources and tools to shift the conditions such that communities have power, voice and agency to be self-determined in ways that people and communities thrive,” he explains.
In his first year as a Program Officer, Sean played a key role in visioning, establishing, and investing in a Native American-led fund structure in Colorado. This investment was one of the first examples of shared accountability milestones being embedded in a grant structure, which has illuminated The Colorado Health Foundation’s deepened investment in Indigenous communities and increased transparency about how resources are moving to Colorado’s Indigenous communities. Sean has also been an integral leader in shifting the Foundation’s housing strategy from traditional housing access approach tactics to a racial justice, root cause-focused housing justice approach, transforming how the team invests in community-led efforts.
Sean is always looking to learn and improve his philanthropy practice. In 2022, he was part of the second Funders Together: Foundations for Racial Equity cohort. His participation allowed him to not only share about The Colorado Health Foundation’s housing work and dedication to people of color but also learn from Colorado nonprofits and foundations across the country.
When Sean has downtime in Denver or throughout the state, he enjoys visiting local coffee shops, hands-on volunteering and learning new things through podcasts, documentaries and books.
Education
Master of Professional Studies, Public Relations and Corporate Communications (Specialized in Philanthropy Communication) - Georgetown University
BS, Communications and Philosophy - University of Miami