Danielle Montrose has been with CoLEAD since 2021.
She started working in the Social Services field in 1997. In 2001, she graduated with Honors from Seattle University with a B.A. in Psychology. She has spent the last 12 years of her career working with our unhoused community in Seattle. Danielle has held positions as a Housing Case Manager, Case Manager, Outreach Responder, Mentor, Supervisor, and currently as a Senior Participant Support Specialist. Regardless of the title of her position, her two main objectives have been to provide a single point of accountability for coordination of services for her clients and to give guidance and support to her fellow frontline workers.
Danielle is passionate about using a trauma-informed lens while applying the principles of harm reduction as she accompanies her clients as they journey through their lives and sometimes to their deaths. She will continue to hold herself accountable for providing services in an equitable, anti-racist manner and will continue to do her part in dismantling white supremacy culture. She is a loud and proud social justice warrior and will never stand idly by when she sees injustice. She believes it says a lot when society is more angry about homeless people ruining the aesthetic of their city than they are about the fact that there are human beings sleeping outside every night. Regardless of how they got there, they are someone’s mother, father, aunt, uncle, sister, brother, and friend. Danielle hopes that someday we will live in a world where veterans of war, senior citizens, those suffering from mental illness, those battling addiction, and the thousands of children who are out on the streets will all have a home with a bed where they lay their heads every night. She knows the work that she and her colleagues are doing at CoLEAD is one way to turn that hope into a reality.
In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.
Albert Schweitzer