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Kelly Collini
Kelly Collini thinks it’s important to know what you’re good at, what makes you tick. For her, that’s her work at SAFE and all the borders it opens for women including herself. Collini started making moves early. From working as a pharmacist hack to her Communications and Business degree at UW, to Director of Development at Wyoming Public Radio, to work at Institute for Environment and Natural Resources and Cathedral Home for Children, to her 6 year commitment to SAFE – she hasn’t looked back.
What Collini seems to do well is apply her skills and knowledge at a practical level with each challenge she accepts. At SAFE her core belief is that the same kind of communication and trust built at the foundation, within the organization, will enrich the kind of systematic care and job security that they then extend to single women.
Collini feels lucky to be working with progressive smart young women. And she sees how they all learn from each other. She’s impressed by their openness, non-judgmental support, and sense of equality which go far into enhancing the work that SAFE does. They naturally don’t see color and race and sexual orientation. All of this being true, she has much reason to feel optimistic about the future.
“To feel like I’ve made a difference,” is important to Collini. She knows that she’s incredibly resourceful and comes from a place of abundance. The women she has met and worked with along the way, the tough lessons she’s learned through family and friends, and the wonderful women she’s had around her from an early age who were willing to share and guide her, have all been a great part of her professional growth. Specifically, Collini served as Treasurer of the Board for the Wyoming Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (WCADVSA) and is past Chair of the Joint Powers Board which oversees the Albany County Crime Victim Witness program. Collini also serves on the legislative committee for the WCADVSA.
Collini has resided in Wyoming for 32 years. She is happily married with one daughter and three grandchildren and she knows how to have a hoot outside of work. Growing up in Southeastern Michigan near Detroit, she went to hundreds of concerts in the 70s and knows the lyrics to thousands of classic rock and roll songs, and friends use her as a resource for that too. She said ‘go team’ early on by being the “second women to ever be Heyoke bird for Casper College... donning an incredibly ornate, and hot, bird costume which consisted of rabbit fur stretched over a football helmet, epoxy eyes and a fiberglass beak”. This also earned her a year of college tuition. She also knows how to write “bad poetry, lots of it” for any occasion she can find. Yup, Collini gets her feathers ruffled up for her causes.
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