Alicia Moreno
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Alicia "Ali" Moreno is the Co-Founder, Co-Owner, and Executive Director of two Boulder, Colorado healthcare organizations built in direct response to systems failing the communities they were meant to serve: RISE Collective, an all-trimester abortion clinic and one of only six clinics in the world offering later abortion care, and PHNX Clinic, a gender-affirming and future LGBTQIA+ primary care practice. A retired U.S. Army veteran, Ali brought that same discipline and crisis-response instinct to healthcare, serving as Chief Operating Officer of a clinic team with an average of 17 years working together — one of only five clinics in the US providing this level of specialized abortion care. When that clinic closed after more than 50 years in operation, the team was given just four days' notice.
Rather than let five decades of expertise and access disappear, Ali and that same team rebuilt it from the ground up in 179 days, founding RISE Collective on a deliberately new model: care without justification, structural protection against political interference, worker-owned, shared governance, and access without financial gatekeeping. That same philosophy drives PHNX Clinic, currently delivering gender-affirming care to minors and expanding to whole-person, community-centered care to LGBTQIA+ patients who have too often been failed, delayed, or mistreated elsewhere. Under Ali's leadership, both organizations operate on the belief that in a moment of coordinated political attacks on reproductive rights and gender-affirming care, the answer isn't just to defend what existed — it's to build something structurally better in its place.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:
- That crisis can be an opening to rebuild systems better instead of just replacing what failed.
- How Alicia and her team reopened an all-trimester abortion clinic just 179 days after closure.
- Why dignity and removing judgment from healthcare are structural choices that change patient outcomes.
- How shared governance and worker ownership keep power circulating through patients, providers, and communities.
- That speed is possible under real constraints when experienced teams trust their own expertise.
- Why political attack does not have to mean retreat when building is a viable response.
- How care for caregivers with fair pay and respect becomes part of clinical quality.
- Why all-trimester abortion care and gender-affirming care can be normalized as genuinely whole-person healthcare.
- How Alicia moved from competitors to colleagues to build provider-owned clinics after a 50-year clinic closed.
- That the next world we build is not limited to the systems we inherited.
about the show
Impact Makers is a business documentary television series featuring entrepreneurs, operators, business leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are building real solutions in the world.
Each episode takes viewers inside the story behind the impact, showing what was built, why it matters, and how it works in real life. Guests share the decisions, risks, setbacks, systems, and turning points that shaped their work and helped them create measurable change.
The series highlights leaders across business, technology, education, health, community development, social enterprise, and other industries where meaningful work is being done.
Impact Makers focuses on people who are putting ideas into action and creating results that influence customers, communities, industries, and lives.
For featured guests, the series provides a platform to share their story, build authority, and give audiences a deeper look at the mission, systems, and leadership behind their impact.
