CREJ - Multifamily Properties Quarterly - March 2019
The debate over whether nature or nurture is the greater influence in human development continues in some quarters. In the person of Britta Fisher, the city of Denver’s new chief housing officer in the Denver Office of Economic Development, the debate seems to have been settled: It’s nature and nurture. Born to parents who met while competing as teenagers in a 4-H radio competition and raised on a 1,200-acre farm near Bernadotte, Minnesota (population eight people and five dogs), Fisher saw the hard work, focus and dedication necessary to maintain a farm that size. With the competitive genes inherited from her parents, she applied herself to the 4-H program and at 14, despite losing her father, became the youngest State 4-H Ambassador to date. She went on to work for the National 4-H Council and created curricula for youth projects and training programs and continued to do that for five years. Her high school, Sibley East, was created from consolidation of the two high schools attended by her parents. At 16, she began attending Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, Minnesota, the largest town near Bernadotte, an hour away, in Blue Earth County. There she began taking college-level courses so that by the time she graduated at 17, she had two years of dual credits that gave her an associate degree. Her first job out of high school was a year-long assignment to write the history of the city of North Mankato. She earned a degree from Wartburg College in Iowa, a school she chose because of its mission dedicated to “… challenging and nurturing students for lives of leadership and service as a spirited expression of their faith and learning” and the consistency of that mission with the values and responsibilities her parents nurtured in her. While there, she filled her competitive hours learning to play soccer and rugby. After graduation, she applied to and was accepted in the Urban Servant Corps, a year-long volunteer program in Denver sponsored by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. During that year, she lived in community with nine other volunteers who all worked full-time with community nonprofits serving Denver’s neediest. Fisher’s assignment was with Metro Caring, the antihunger food provider and basic services agency. It was there that the program participants taught her their greatest concern was keeping a safe, decent and affordable place to call home. She met Dr. Berkeley Rich, a retired pediatrician who had started a grass-roots nonprofit called Housing Justice. Struck by Rich’s passion and energy for the cause and the resonance of the organization’s mission with her own values, she became its first executive director. There is a Biblical admonition to not hide one’s light under a bushel but rather to let it shine out. In the first of many instances, the brightness of Fisher’s light came to the attention of Doug Wayland, a member of the Housing Justice board, who recruited her to a job at his organization, the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. During her time at Housing Justice and the Coalition, she also volunteered for the Colorado Housing Investment Fund Coalition, an effort to create a state affordable housing trust fund and for Wheat Ridge 2020, a program in her adopted hometown. While serving as director of community and small-business development at Wheat Ridge 2020, the position of executive director came open and she was encouraged to apply for the position, which she won. Wheat Ridge 2020 (now known as Localworks) is focused on job creation in the city of Wheat Ridge, transportation, community engagement, amenities, and community and economic development. During her 11 years at the organization, one of her most visible achievements was the “road diet” plan that was created along West 38th Avenue. That change in traffic and turn lanes, decorations and parking reflects the many changes taking place in downtowns across the country where business areas are taking back space from the automobile and creating places where people, cars and businesses can happily coexist. In early 2017, she was named one of the “40 Under 40” future leaders by the Denver Business Journal. Then in October of 2017, she was recruited away from Localworks to take over another nonprofit called mpowered, an organization devoted to helping individuals learn about money management. Meanwhile, the city and county of Denver was undergoing a reorganization of its Office of Economic Development and began a search for a chief housing officer in the spring of 2018. A member of the Denver City Council recommended that Fisher apply; she did and she was selected in June. Fisher said it was hard to leave mpowered but that the decision was made easier by Mayor Michael Hancock and his personal connections to and experience with afford able housing, his understanding of the complexities of its delivery and his vision for the future. She also enjoys the professional symmetry in the work early in her career with Housing Justice, the Coalition for the Homeless and the Colorado Housing Investment Fund and the creation of the permanent affordable housing fund created by the Denver City Council. She is chair of State Housing Board for the Division of Housing until her term ends in 2020. She and Ryan, her husband of 16 years, live in Arvada with their three children and his parents. They enjoy hiking, snowboarding and golf.