Community then, community now
At 16 years old, growing up in upstate New York, she discovered her passion for serving her community, working as a junior firefighter. In the present day, she is the Colorado Representative of House District 27. After learning more about Brianna, it is unsurprising that her 2020 experience was centered around her unwavering commitment to community service and her passion for aiding those in need.
In her early career as a junior firefighter, when the lights and sirens sounded off, this meant someone needed help. There have been several facets to Brianna’s career progression, but they all involved responding to the needs of her community in one form or another. She is also a dedicated student of science who has earned Bachelor’s Degrees in Physics and Geology and later went on to earn her Masters in Geochemistry. She moved to Colorado to pursue a career in environmental consulting with a long-term goal of eventually joining the FBI. However, due to strict age requirements enforced by the FBI, Brianna reached a point where this career path was no longer an option. Although she spent the better part of her life working towards this, she had no choice but to move forward in another pursuit. While she was unsure of what to pursue next, she recognized that community service remained her priority and the driving force for the next chapter in her career.
While this was a disappointing realization, it was at this time she ascended into her journey of putting her needs first and living her truth. Brianna is a compassionate person who places the needs of others before her own. Taking the time to focus on herself felt counterintuitive in many ways. However, she knew it was time to stop sacrificing her happiness, and Brianna came out as transgender. She explains, “For the longest time, I didn’t want to have the realization of who I was.” She was aware that this realization would create barriers for her ways she was not used to; there would be new challenges in all aspects, including her career, housing, and daily life. She went on to say, “I avoided wanting to find out who I was as a person. It was a scary endeavor.” On the other side of her endeavor were newfound confidence and the brilliance of her authentic self.
In this confidence, Brianna understood that she was now part of a community that needed support and representation. Her involvement in local government initially took shape as advocacy work for the LGBTQ+ community by speaking with legislators and becoming more engaged in politics. Before coming out, there were several laws, policies, and political matters to which she did not pay much attention. Issues that she wasn’t previously in tune with became the focus of her mission and her advocacy. Eventually, Brianna was asked if she would ever consider running for office. At first, Brianna thought, “I’m a trans person. No one elects people like me.” The idea intrigued her, but she did not believe it was possible.
In a blog about the challenges and experiences of the year 2020, personal journeys and expeditions hold great significance. Our progression in life, whether it be in a career, a relationship, or a personal venture, all has meaning. It catalyzes who we become and our identity. Our identity shapes our experiences, how we interact with the world, and how the world interacts with us. Brianna’s journey led her to become the advocate and leader she is today for not only the LGBTQ+ community but her community at large. Her role is a vital influence in society, especially during one of the most challenging years we may face in our lifetime.
Stepping into 2020, Brianna was in the second year of her first term as a Colorado Representative. Anyone who has ever started a new job understands that typically around this mark, one begins to feel more confident, comfortable and is developing a decent sense of the role and responsibilities. Brianna had progressed and learned in her first legislative session and was ready to put those lessons into practice. She was finding her rhythm and was prepared to use that knowledge to address some of the more significant matters she was passionate about, including mental health, consumer rights, and LGBTQ+ rights. Brianna built a foundation in her first year and was looking forward to making the structure of her new career. She was motivated, hopeful, and eager to get to work.
As a representative, Brianna must stay up to date on current events. Therefore, like so many of us, Brianna watched the news and monitored social media as COVID-19 updates circulated. She couldn’t help but think back to the other virus breakouts we have seen in our lifetimes, such as Swine Flu and H1N1. Based on past experience, Brianna understood that these outbreaks did not highly impact most communities in Colorado or the country at large. As someone with a scientific background, she understood the possibility of COVID becoming a severe pandemic in a world that is “…becoming smaller and smaller,” as Brianna explained it. People are within the closest reach of one another they ever have been before, and Brianna understood that a pandemic was not beyond the realm of possibilities.
Brianna’s concept of the world becoming smaller and smaller is something to consider. Perhaps this is a phenomenon we have not yet pondered in great detail; the topics that have taken center stage since the genesis of COVID-19 have been arguably more severe. However, this concept goes beyond the world becoming more populated with people, infrastructure, and industrial development. Shrinking distance is also the reality of our digital world, whether we want to see it that way or not. We may have more access to information and people worldwide, but the content we see every day is exponentially polarizing and reaching a larger audience than ever before.
Brianna was at the forefront of this digital frenzy. A significant piece to her role as a representative is to ensure that information is promptly and accurately delivered. As pandemic-related events unfolded, she assured her community received timely updates when expected. She gives great credit to her legislative aid and her team for navigating this new job within a new job. It was a blur of information and all hands on deck work of which no one was accustomed. She explained this experience as “We had to switch to a different mechanism of what we do in our jobs as legislators.” Amidst the blur of information, she saw businesses shut down and aided people who needed unemployment benefits to simply survive. Her workload as a legislator for constituent services skyrocketed. Her Inbox was full of inquiries and concerns from people who were not able to access their benefits. Amongst this chaos, she and her colleagues were still trying to pass bills, maintain effective communication amongst all stakeholders, the governor’s staff, and hold town halls to address citizens’ concerns and questions.
In addition to the new issues that COVID-19 presented to the general public and our community leaders, there remained many goals that would prove more challenging to accomplish. These included representing and advocating for policies that improve the lives of those who belong to the LGBTQ+ community. While social turbulence was high in 2020, Brianna explained that the year was somewhat of a reprieve for the LGBTQ+ community regarding some aspects of legislation. Many legislative sessions were cut short during COVID; this interruption halted many anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-trans bills. However, when I spoke with Brianna in the summer of 2021, there were 250 introduced bills nationwide that could negatively impact the LGBTQ+ community. Nine of these bills were specifically anti-trans and signed into law in 2021.
Fortunately, in Colorado, Brianna doesn’t encounter this type of legislation as often, but it does not change the reality that these bills are introduced and passed across the country; this reveals a lack of LGBTQ+ representation in United States politics. As part of Brianna’s advocacy work, she and her staff release op-eds in areas where these types of bills are active. Their work aims to help provide perspective on how specific legislation harms the LGBTQ+ community and help those who want to get involved become allies. The year 2020 seemingly has not stifled Brianna and her team, as they continue to get creative in the ways they reach people and make an impact.
In our conversation, it was overwhelmingly clear how invested and passionate she is about the work she does. While navigating uncharted waters in her work life, her personal life presented new and exciting happenings. Brianna and her wife entered the year 2020 as newlyweds, and by the end of the year, they had worked from home, bought a new home, and tried new baking recipes to pass the time and temporarily forget the woes of 2020. Upon reflection on the year and her experience, Brianna remains remarkably positive and motivated about our future state. Brianna’s lesson that she shares with us post-2020 is “We are very resilient, whatever problem faces us, we can come up with a way to fix it and ease the pain of the situation.”
