Sparrow Etter Carlson Founder & Co-Executive Director

Sparrow Etter Carlson (she/her) has spent 24 years alongside her unhoused neighbors. She is the Founder and Co-Executive Director of Sacred Streets, and prior to that, co-founded Aurora Commons, the Safe, Healthy, Empowered (SHE) Clinic, and the Green Bean Coffeehouse - a non-profit café. She has also worked in policy and planning within the homelessness sector.

Each of these models has been birthed in community and tended to lovingly as a direct response to the social death, isolation, and transactional services that unhoused neighbors are forced to live and survive within.

She holds a Master's degree from Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, sits on the Advisory Board for Seattle University’s Center for Ecumenical and Interreligious Engagement, and serves on the Leadership team with the National Faith Coalition to End Homelessness.

Hayden Wartes Co-Executive Director

Since 2004, Hayden has co-created safe places of hospitality where unhoused and housed neighbors encounter one another — work that has been inextricably shaped by over twenty years in community along North Aurora Ave. She co-founded the Green Bean Coffeehouse with Sparrow, and for the past 10 years is pastor at Awake— a small neighborhood faith expression committed to cultivating space where people from all walks of life can live as though they belong to one another.

Liz Adams Director of Companionship Trainings

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.