2025 Inaugural Mountain Mover Award Winners

The Women's Foundation of Colorado // May 13, 2025

Recognizing Our State’s Individual, Organizational, and Legislative Champions to Advance Policy for Women

In order to create bold systems change, it’s vital to work with individuals, organizations, and legislative champions to advance policy and advocacy. This year The Women’s Foundation of Colorado joined a passionate coalition committed to expanding renter protections for victim-survivors of domestic violence, abuse, and stalking through HB25-1168 – Housing Protections for Victim-Survivors. Many Coloradans who face gender-based violence also experience serious money problems and housing challenges.

The No. 1 obstacle to survivors’ safety is financial insecurity

In fact, the No. 1 obstacle to survivors’ safety is financial insecurity. When people leave dangerous situations, they often lose income and have to pay for new housing. Abusers frequently control victims’ finances or limit their access to money. Because of this, renters experiencing gender-based violence may fall behind on rent payments, have trouble getting loans, or become cut off from people and services that could help them. 

As of April 28, 2025, the bill is waiting to be signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis. HB-1168 improves housing security and legal protections for survivors of gender-based violence in the following ways:

Housing security measures 

• Enforcing protections that allow survivors to end leases early 

• Protecting survivors’ security deposits from damage caused by abusers 

• Providing more time to find new housing after eviction 

Court access and due process improvements 

• Creating more options to repay late rent and avoid eviction 

• Expanding types of gender-based violence eligible for eviction defense 

• Offering more ways for survivors to verify their status for protections 

• Creating processes to re-access courts after default judgments 

• Allowing extended court timelines when delays are due to gender-based violence 

Safety protections

• Guaranteeing survivors can make safety adjustments to their homes, including changing locks 

• Protecting confidentiality through personal service of evictions and keeping court records private 

Congratulations to Our 2025 Mountain Mover Award Winners!

We are thrilled to celebrate the individuals and organizations below and recognize their contribution to advancing gender, racial, and economic equity in Colorado through the inaugural Mountain Mover Award. 

Mountain Mover, Advocate of the Year – Eunice Brownlee  Eunice bravely shared her story through a WFCO blog post and by testifying at the Capitol in support of HB25-1168. It is vital for elected officials to hear directly from individuals who have experienced the policies being addressed.

Mountain Mover, Organizations of the Year – Colorado Coalition for the Homeless (CCH), Andrew West and Colorado Poverty Law Project (CPLP), Jack Regenbogen

CCH and CPLP not only led the 1168 coalition but also worked directly with legislators and lobbyists to ensure the bill passed with feedback from key stakeholders and robust advocacy efforts.

Mountain Mover, Legislators of the Year – Rep. Mandy Lindsay and Sen. Mike Weissman

Rep. Lindsay and Sen. Weissman were the legislative champions who ensured this bill passed through the Colorado General Assembly.

Mountain Mover, Special Advocate of the Year – The Honorable Brittany Pettersen  This year we would like also like to recognize a Colorado Congresswoman who lifted up the experience of working moms everywhere by advocating to change Congress’ archaic rules against proxy voting for new parents.

Join us on Tuesday, May 20 at noon to celebrate these incredible leaders in our community!

You can register here. We will celebrate our Mountain Mover Award winners and also reflect on this year’s legislative session with remarks from Renee Ferrufino, WFCO president and CEO plus a presentation and discussion with Alison Friedman Phillips, WFCO director of policy & advocacy, and Naomi Amaha, director of policy and government affairs at The Denver Foundation. Thank you for your support of this important part of our work. 

2025 Mountain Mover Award Art Print

This year’s Mountain Mover Awardees were gifted a framed print of Empowered Women Mountain Art by local artist Ingrid “Kiki” Davis of Simple Art Studio. Kiki is from Guatemala and lives in Silverthorne. She owns her studio with her husband and provides community art space and classes.