Sparrow Etter Carlson, Founder & Co-Executive Director

Sparrow Etter Carlson (she/her) has spent 22 years alongside her unhoused neighbors. She is the Founder and Co-Executive Director of Sacred Streets, Prior to that, she Co-founded Aurora Commons, The Safe, Healthy, Empowered (SHE) Clinic and was Co-Founder of the Green Bean Coffeehouse (a non-profit cafe). All of these models of care have been birthed in community and tended to lovingly as a direct response to the social death and isolation that our unhoused neighbors must live and survive in.

Sparrow is not okay with the precious people whom she loves and feels love in return, being treated as ex-humans in our society and she believes that the magical and often considered "unreasonable" ingredients of attention, hospitality, reciprocity, beauty and belonging should no longer feel shocking for people to encounter within our service sector nor should they be labeled, "radical" but rather- considered THE foundational way of seeing, being and animating care that is woven through every encounter, system or service along the homeless care continuum.

She believes all of us here can co-create constellations of care and belonging with our unhoused neighbors in our individual communities and that, if we do, we will strengthen the fabric of our communal flourishing.

She hopes to get to know more of your story and explore how Sacred Streets can partner and support you as we move towards the possibilities...

Hayden Wartes, Co-Executive Director

Since 2004 Sparrow Etter Carlson (she/her) and Hayden Wartes (she/her) have created safe places of hospitality for unhoused neighbors and housed neighbors to encounter one another. Both students of Mental Health Chaplaincy, they co-founded the Green Bean Coffeehouse (a non-profit cafe) in 2005 with Sanctuary Church. Sparrow co-founded Aurora Commons in 2011 and most recently created and launched the Safe, Healthy, Empowered (SHE) Clinic: an accessible, kind, non-judgmental, quality health care clinic for female identified people who sleep and work along Aurora Avenue. She has also worked in policy and planning within the Homelessness Sector.

Sparrow and Hayden are inextricably formed by their twenty years in community with precious human beings along North Aurora Ave. and by the community of Awake, a small neighborhood faith expression that birthed Aurora Commons and continues to cultivate space where people from all walks of life can live as though we belong to one another. For the last eight years Hayden has pastored within the Awake community.

Shelly Vaughn (she/her), Lived Experience Liaison & Street Chaplain

Liz Adams (she/her) , Companionship Trainer & Support

Lizbeth Adams is a certified trainer of the Companionship Model developed by Reverend Craig Rennebohm. She teaches the model in workshops and uses its principles in outreach to unhoused people and others living with trauma. Trained as a neuroscientist and clinical research ethicist, she believes in the healing properties of compassionate interactions. Having lost her brother to mental illness, she believes that each of us is worthy of dignity and each of us deserves respite from suffering. 

Melissa Goss-Jentz (she/her), Circles of Care Advisor

Nathan Nelson (he/him), Neighborhood Coalition Lead

Luke Sumner (he/him), Curriculum Advisor

Ren Sullivan (she/her), Co-Founder of Aurora Commons, Holistic Healing and Ritual Advisor

Ericka Frodsham (she/her), Lived Experience Expert and Care Management Advisor

Advisory board: coming soon