Angela Cobián ’11 and Jack Teter ’13 have spent more than a decade working in public education organization and advocacy. They took the foundation they gained at CC and used it to build careers that served their community. They are now using their years of experience and working together for a better world in the reproductive rights and justice movement. Both have been in the movement pre and post the fall of Roe vs. Wade.
Angela Cobián ’11
Major: Political Science, Spanish minor
Hometown: Denver (west side)
Current location: Denver (west side)
Since graduating, Cobián has been an elementary school teacher, Fulbright scholar, Treasurer of the Denver Board of Education, and an issue-based community organizer working on local and national issues like immigration, school-to-prison-pipeline, language justice, school funding, and reproductive rights. She is now the Senior Director of Organizing and Partnerships at Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and Action Fund, where she builds national partnerships strategy for the intersection with reproductive rights, immigration, criminalization, and democracy rights.
“My team builds partnerships and coalitions to advance our vision of an unstoppable, intersectional movement for reproductive freedom and equality,” she says. “Right now, we are scenario planning for how the presidential election may impact immigration and democracy rights, which are the cross-movement issues we prioritize. Both are inextricably connected to bodily autonomy.”
Cobián’s mixed status family, students, and former constituents all stand to benefit from the national policy issues she advocates and organizes for. She is the Board Chair of the Bell Policy Center in Colorado alongside other CC alumni board members. They work to ensure the public revenue system works for all Coloradans.
“The Bell’s work impacts the state of the schools I taught in and was responsible for, as well as the economic mobility for all people in our state,” she says. “Denver, Colorado is the first place my family was able to buy a home in the United States, so the Bell’s work is personal to me.”
Cobián started working at Planned Parenthood at the end of the term of the former president, whose speech frequently vilified her community and those she fights for. “I am a Mexican woman, and at work I feel a constant existential threat of knowing we may be able to win election cycles, but can’t govern effectively in the long term due to the regression of our court system,” she says. “I will never forget standing in front of the Supreme Court of the United States after the fall of Roe, knowing that they had also gutted the Voting Rights Act, and were posed to do more damage. There is an ever present need to fight for democracy!”
Cobián loves what she does and the communities she serves. She is eager to guide future leaders of the movement and sees how her education enables her to do the necessary work. “My liberal arts education equipped me with the critical thinking skills needed to create strategies and tactics that account for a dynamic political context that’s always shifting in campaign planning,” she says. “I found community organizing as a satisfying strategy, and stayed close to that life’s purpose. I will follow the fights that threaten the existence and well-being of my family, and by extension, community.”
Jack Teter ’13
Major: Religion, with a minor in Feminist and Gender Studies
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY
Current location: Denver, CO
After graduating from CC, Teter served as a legislative aide, campaign manager for then-Representative Pete Lee, organizing, and performing campaigns work for public education candidates. Teter is now the Regional Director of Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains (PPRM) where he works with Latinx organizers to win legislative campaigns in Colorado, New Mexico, southern Nevada, and Wyoming.
“I design patient-first policy by thinking through every possible barrier a patient might bump into along their way to accessing care – every gap they might fall into – and figuring out how to eliminate anything that may get between them and their care. Our health systems are so broken, and as a safety-net provider, we care not only for people in our states, but literally thousands of additional patients traveling from states where abortion care is now a felony.”
Teter is an expert in state abortion, gender-affirming care, and other sexual and reproductive health policies. He writes laws, helps pass them, and ensures they’re implemented with fidelity so that there is evident change in people’s lived experiences. He also runs political campaigns for pro-reproductive rights candidates in Colorado and New Mexico and works with a multi-state team of Latinx organizers fighting for legislative and organizing wins across the region. Some recent policy wins include drafting Colorado and New Mexico’s abortion and gender-affirming care shield laws, creating cost-sharing-free abortion coverage for commercial insurance in Colorado, creating cost-sharing-free STI testing, prevention, and treatment, and passing policies to allow young people to access STI preventive care like PrEP and the HPV vaccine on their own consent without parental interference.
“The infrastructure is so, so strained,” Teter says. “Patients are driving thousands of miles to access care, missing work, crowdfunding cash to pay for hotels, driving all night with their kids asleep in the backseat – the stakes are so high, and we need more resources.”
While there are plenty of challenges to his work, and they continue to grow, Teter still loves what he does and the communities he serves. “We can come up with an idea, something that’s never been attempted before, write it down, and make it a reality. Good policymaking feels like science fiction. I also love being one of very few trans people in policy. I was the first transgender staffer at the state Capitol in Colorado. It gives me a lens to craft policy that meets the needs for one of the most medically disenfranchised communities, and that helps all patients get better care.”
Teter says at CC he learned to read closely, write precisely, and research exhaustively. “It absolutely translates to the work I do every day,” he says. “I’m a firm believer that undergraduate majors are often irrelevant, so study what you love and you’ll build the skills you need.”