The Trail Ahead

In 2019, we launched a journey toward becoming a regenerative organization. Our guides and partners in this work, nRhythm, define regenerative organizations as living, evolving and naturally functioning organizations where abundance and resilience are recurring outcomes of their underlying health. This way of being is transformational, continuous work.

This effort began with a shift in perspective – moving away from thinking of our organization as a machine to be well-oiled and towards a mindset that views Trailhead as a living system made up of unique, developing members whose well-being and interdependence determines the health of our organization.

We are two years into this journey and we are still learning and evolving what regeneration
looks like in action. In abundance, regeneration actively reverses historic societal inequities and regenerates people and communities. To achieve this, we are learning from a set of regenerative design principles that are helping us to re-envision Trailhead’s organizational roles, operating structures, processes, resource allocation and investment strategies.

As we traverse into 2022, we are exploring pathways to deepen our understanding of how regeneration intersects with anti-racism work and our ability as an organization to not only dismantle white supremacy work culture, but recognize when we are perpetuating it. We’re examining how the hard and necessary anti-racism work that is happening at the individual level can lead to team change, which leads to organizational change and ultimately translates to systems change, while making note of the resources and accountability structures that are needed in order to be regenerating people and communities.

We are venturing into this New Year with a great sense of leadership, accountability and recognition of our power as we strive to build a Colorado where all people have a fair and just opportunity to be healthy and live in a healthy environment. As we continue to learn and shape our understanding of regeneration, we are committed to sharing how we’re translating these learnings into practice and organizational change at Trailhead. Our drive for justice, collaboration and capacity building are the bedrock from which this work stems and we are grateful to nRhythm for nurturing our growth; to our partners for their help in assessing the underlying health of our programs; and to the communities we work alongside to reimagine the full and real potential of public health in Colorado.

We are eager for the year to come and to be sharing this trail in good company.

With gratitude,
The Trailhead Team

This post originated from our January newsletter. You can stay up to date on news from Trailhead and our partners by becoming a subscriber here.

Reflecting on Growth in 2021: A Year in Review

From exploring new pathways for supporting Colorado’s public health workforce to building on the impact of numerous existing programs, included here are highlights from 2021 experienced across Trailhead’s broad spectrum of work.