I'm Isabella, my pronouns are she/her/hers. I was born and raised in Denmark but have spent the past decade living, learning, and working in the U.S. Outside of work I enjoy pottery, weightlifting, board games, and being in nature.

Growing up in Denmark as a person of color had a huge impact on my lived experience. I endured a lot of racism and saw a lot of injustice in a country that is known to be one of the most socially equitable countries in the world. Partially because of that experience I have always wanted to dedicate myself, my time, and my resources to underrepresented and underserved communities, many of which I identify as a part of.

As a Statewide Equity Impact Analyst, my job is to use the power of data to tell the stories of our communities and help visualize where we are and where we want to be in terms of the equity work done within our state agencies. Another essential part of my job is to measure our impact as a government and ensure that the work we do results in positive outcomes for the communities we are here to serve. My superpower is my ability to question. I will challenge approaches, authority, purposes, and impact to get to answers quickly and create an adaptive environment for the work we do. To the team, I bring my lived experience which everyone else on the team contributes as well, my analytical skills, my dedication to fostering partnerships, and my deep love for the communities we work with.

My job is to ensure that the impact of our work is accounted for and that we measure our impact as a government. I commit to working in partnership with our government agencies to hold ourselves accountable and continuously improve our work around equity. As government officials, we are historically and sometimes currently responsible for doing harm to the communities that we are supposed to serve. We all have good intentions and are here to serve, but we need to be acutely aware of our actions as a government and evaluate our impact to ensure that we are helping instead of harming. I believe that we are all on a lifelong journey of undoing oppression and racism within ourselves. As I continue on my journey by way of educating myself, holding myself accountable, and learning from the communities around me, I will push for the same kind of journey to be a part of the Office of Equity as a whole.

I want to see our communities feel safe, supported, and have their needs covered. Specifically, I'm passionate about housing access. I have worked with housing and homelessness research for several years. I believe that none of our neighbors and community members should be forced to live outside, and I believe that housing is a human right. With these beliefs comes a rather optimistic goal: that we can eradicate homelessness. It will take a lot of collective work before we can get to that point, but I choose to be defiantly optimistic on this topic and I say we can do it.