Jon Monteith is the Director of Equity, Belonging, and Internal Communications. In this role, they work closely with the Center’s leadership team to ensure internal communications and engagement efforts with staff are grounded in the organization’s commitment to equity and inclusion and contribute to a culture of community-building, repair, and care for one another. They also play a central role in the development of programs and initiatives that strengthen the Center’s ability to foster belonging, mattering, and psychological safety for staff, and they serve as a strategic advisor and thought partner on organization-wide efforts to infuse equity and justice into the Center’s external communications and policy work.
Prior to joining the Center, Monteith worked for more than 15 years in the public and nonprofit sectors — including as a social work and healing professional, DEIB practitioner, and communications director for multiple state and national organizations. In that time, they served on the federal legislative team of the Human Rights Campaign, worked as a press aide in Congress, and served as lead speechwriter for the Democratic National Committee during the 2012 election cycle.
As communications director for One Colorado ― the state’s leading LGBTQ+ advocacy group ― Monteith led strategic communications and served as an on-the-record spokesperson for the campaigns that defeated multiple anti-LGBTQ bills in the state legislature, built public support for marriage equality across the state, and secured new protections for transgender Coloradans. They also served as communications director and as a member of the senior leadership team for the State Innovation Exchange, a national resource and strategy center supporting thousands of state legislators and advocates in advancing and defending progressive public policies throughout the country.
More recently, they have studied and worked alongside many of the nation’s leading experts in antiracist and anti-oppressive practice, trauma healing and recovery, and resilient well-being at the individual, interpersonal, and organizational level. During their time at the University of Washington Resilience Lab, they co-authored and served as the lead editor of a guidebook for promoting well-being in learning environments that has received national recognition by academic institutions and social and emotional learning experts across the country. Additionally, Monteith was recognized by the Washington State Society for Clinical Social Work for their graduate school research on disenfranchised grief and unresolved trauma in the workplace.
Monteith has a bachelor’s degree in Rhetoric from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Washington.