Isac Carrillo-Bravo believes strangers can change each other’s lives. Long before he joined Ednium, he put himself in spaces where he could connect with others: leadership groups, intramural sports teams, a fraternity.
But after college, connections became harder to find. He was building his career in human services, and he wanted to meet people who shared his commitment to service, advocacy, and Denver’s communities.
Then he found Ednium on LinkedIn and joined the Denver Deep Dive program. After the first session, he knew he had found a place where he belonged.
Months later, Isac’s sister died and he began navigating a kind of grief he had never known.
“It broke me,” he said. “There was no way to run from it. There was no way to avoid it.”
That’s when his sense of connection to Ednium’s community became something deeper.
While the process of grieving and healing was new to him, it was not something he had to do alone. His Denver Deep Dive cohort gave him a safe space to be vulnerable and talk about his pain without feeling judged.
The program’s holistic healthcare session, which focuses on physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing, also gave Isac tools to move through his grief without running from it: a conversation with a therapist, healing practices, journaling, and breathing exercises.
For Isac, those conversations changed how he understood care. Wellbeing isn’t just about staying physically active or pushing through hard moments. It is also having language for what he feels and experiences, practices that help him stay grounded, and a community that can hold him when he needs support.
Wellbeing & Agency
Physical and mental wellbeing is one of Ednium’s five domains of alumni agency. Young adults experience physical and mental wellbeing when they feel positively about their physical and mental health, and when they can navigate to environments that promote their health.
Our latest research tells us why this domain matters, and why Ednium’s work to center wellbeing is critical.
Our research shows young alumni report lower levels of physical and mental wellbeing than the general population.
34% rated their physical health as poor or fair, compared with 22% of adults in a 2022 Kaiser Family Foundation survey. Mental wellbeing showed similar concerns: 32% rated their mental health as poor or fair, compared with 21% of adults in KFF’s 2022 survey.
Just 4% reported excellent mental health. Nearly half of respondents were not at all or slightly confident in accessing support and services for their physical wellbeing, and over half were not at all or slightly confident in doing so for their mental wellbeing.
Those findings are concerning—and they indicate a clear opportunity.
Young alumni need access to care, culturally responsive resources, trusted relationships, and spaces where mental health, physical health, and spiritual wellbeing can be named without shame.
Notably, people who completed Ednium’s programs reported higher levels of physical and mental wellbeing.
But our work alone can’t address the deep need for wellbeing resources among young adults.
Community-based providers, employers, and schools all have a role to play meeting young adults where they are and reducing barriers like cost, time, and stigma to improve engagement in support and services.
Care Is Part of the Work
Wellbeing is integral to Ednium’s leadership development work.
David Martinez, Ednium’s Alumni Development Manager, helps ensure our programs make space for conversations about holistic healthcare, including physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing. Those conversations invite alumni to explore culture, identity, ancestry, and purpose alongside the systems that shape daily life.
The Denver Deep Dive program’s holistic healthcare session comes after participants have explored political, social, and economic systems, recognizing that we cannot separate health from the conditions in which people live.
The session asks participants to consider how policy, environment, housing, healthcare, and culture all shape wellbeing. It also creates room for people to unlearn what they may have been taught about care. David has seen participants realize that therapy can be for them, that mental health challenges have names, and that spiritual practices can be simple and rooted in questions like: Who am I? Who are my people? What is my purpose?
In a reflection after the session, one participant wrote, “Metaphorically, it felt like coming up for oxygen. Learning and knowing that there are communal supports and organizations who do exist and are dedicated to serving our people in a way that connect us to our roots was healing to say the least.”
For Isac, the holistic healthcare session helped him navigate grief and healing. It also helped him understand more about his own leadership.
“Even through these sessions, I found that leaders are also vulnerable,” he said. “They don’t always have to have stuff figured out.”
That realization followed him outside of Ednium. He journaled. He had deeper conversations with friends. He carried forward breathing practices that help him before soccer, public speaking, and stressful moments. Before Ednium, Isac thought wellbeing was mostly physical. Now, he sees wellbeing as holistic, and inclusive of mental, physical, and spiritual practices.
It also shapes how he shows up for others. Today, as a housing navigator, Isac supports people facing eviction, using vouchers, living in shelters, or experiencing homelessness. His work puts him close to the ways a medical emergency, a death in the family, or unaffordable rent can shift someone’s life.
“I’m using the tools that I learned at the Deep Dive to apply to myself, and also to give back,” Isac said.
There’s Something Here for You
For Isac, Ednium began as a place to meet people who shared his commitment to community. It became a place where connection supported his wellbeing, deepened his leadership, and helped him care for others without leaving himself behind.
That is the invitation at the heart of Leadership Launchpad and Denver Deep Dive.
Applications for both programs are live on our website. For anyone wondering whether they should apply, David says growth often happens in discomfort—but no one has to move through that discomfort alone.
“There’s something in this program that you will need,” he says. “And you won’t know until you come to it.”
Apply for Leadership Launchpad or Denver Deep Dive through Ednium’s website, and join a community where your wellbeing and leadership are nurtured.