City: Denver, Colorado

Reporting to: Director of Strategic Initiatives

The Challenge

In 2024, the mayor of Denver, Michael Johnston, began using Wildly Important Goals (WIGs) as a framework to address large-scale, city-wide challenges. Building on the lessons learned from those WIGs, in 2025, Denver intends to design and implement ambitious City Wide Goals focused on six key areas: homelessness, affordability, climate, safety, vibrancy, and youth. All six goals follow a two-year timeline and will be co-led by the mayor’s office and a relevant city agency.

Regarding youth, Colorado faces a significant childcare shortage: the state’s infant-toddler childcare system only covers 20% of need, leaving a majority of infants and toddlers in the care of nonlicensed providers and/or depriving parents of opportunities to work outside their homes. Colorado is the fifth most expensive state for child care, and 51% of Colorado families compete with at least three other families for a spot in licensed child care. To close these gaps, Denver is collaborating with organizations to research and pilot potential solutions. The research has begun and is primarily focused on policies and regulations to inform potential revisions or reforms to childcare regulations. The youth goal reflects one of Mayor Johnston’s core priorities. He believes that by making Denver the best place in the country to raise a child—from cradle to career—the city can ensure bright futures for children while enabling parents to return to work.

Denver has already made significant progress toward our goals, especially the youth goal. The Office of Children’s Affairs (OCA) has worked to create youth systems and goals in parallel to the mayor’s office City Wide Goal development. Equity is a significant aspect of this work. Historically, based on their location and cost, Denver’s childcare and out-of-school offerings disproportionally benefit white families.

The fellow will offer additional capacity and fresh ideas to help advance our City Wide Goals—particularly in researching and implementing the youth goals. Denver is currently in the process of operationalizing action items within our City Wide Goals. The fellow would help advance the work by completing a research analysis with recommendations around a sub-goal, a report on the development of a new program or pilot, or another research/operational project. These components will be implemented in late 2025 or early 2026—and will help the city tackle its most pressing challenges.

Key questions include:

• What services and programs exist, and what are the gaps?
• What does success look like for the program, and what data do we need to track and measure our progress?
• What can we learn from programs that are already in the implementation stage?
• How well do we understand the equity implications around access to childcare and what programs or initiatives can help address current inequities?

What You’ll Do

To address these questions, the fellow will work with the City Wide Goals Implementation Team to support the research, development, and operationalization of the 2025 City Wide Goals. This team is comprised of mayoral appointees who are managed by the chief of staff. In addition, the fellow will engage with key internal and external stakeholders, including from the Office of Children’s Affairs, Mayor’s Office, Mile High United Way, Rose Community Foundation, and Gary Community Ventures.

The fellow will be expected to:

1. Conduct research and analyze existing services and potential programs to address childcare gaps, particularly to help the city understand terms of services and geographic distribution of childcare sites, as well as the existence of culturally inclusive providers for diverse populations
2. Produce a report or presentation for the mayor’s office summarizing key findings and recommendations for the City Wide Goals
3. Implement and support new pilot programs for the youth City Wide Goals

What You’ll Bring

• Data analysis
• Design thinking
• Policy analysis
• Program implementation/operations