About

Who We Are

The Rainbow Circles is an LGBTQ+-centered, disability-affirming and difference-celebrating mental health and wellness nonprofit located in Fort Collins and serving clients and communities throughout Colorado.

Our Mission

Our mission is to provide accessible care so every client can feel supported, express their authentic self, and thrive in community. We are driven by the belief that healing and collective liberation go hand-in-hand.

Our Values

🤝 Community

We see ourselves as part of an ecosystem—interconnected, interdependent, and stronger together.

In a time when many of our community members are navigating uncertainty about their safety and rights, we're building relationships with organizations across Fort Collins and beyond—because the net of support has to be dense enough to catch people when they fall. Weaving that net within our team, with our clients, with organizations across Fort Collins and beyond is how we work.

🪩 Authenticity

You don't have to perform wellness or translate yourself into someone else's language here. Whether you're in the thick of it, figuring things out, or just looking for a space where you can be exactly who you are—you belong here.

🎭 Creativity and Play

We believe play, creativity, whimsy, and wonder aren't just for kids. They're essential to being human, to healing, and to building a meaningful life.

⚖️ Balance and Sustainability

We believe therapists who are burned out can't do their best work, and clients deserve better than that. We structure how we work to protect capacity, distribute load fairly, and make sure the people showing up for you have enough left to give.

⛓️‍💥Anti-Oppression and Liberation

We work to make mental healthcare genuinely accessible: financially, culturally, and physically. We work to notice and undo oppressive patterns within ourselves and our systems, because healing and liberation are inseparable.

How We Work

We're structured around shared leadership and mutual support. You can read more about how we work together on our Join Our Team page.

Our Story

The Rainbow Circles started in 2020 when three therapists, M Watson Saltis, Alyssa Wright, and Lauren Lessner, saw the need for LGBTQ+-affirming mental health support in Northern Colorado. What began as a small collaborative practice has grown into a community of clinicians working to make affirming care more accessible across our region.

As we grew, we evolved. We committed ourselves to anti-oppressive and liberatory frameworks, developed a shared-resource model so that compensation reflects contribution rather than credential, and cultivated a team of genuinely collaborative clinicians. In 2025, we became a 501(c)3 nonprofit and Devon, our Executive Director, stepped into formal leadership—bringing clearer structure without losing the shared-power and community-care commitments that have always defined us.

We're still young, still learning, still tending to what we're building. But we're creating something that matters: a practice where therapists don't burn out, where clients can find genuinely affirming care, and where the people doing the work have real say in how things take root and grow.

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