We were lucky to catch up with Renata Hill recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Renata thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Moodfuel endeavors to increase health equity and access to care for neighbors, especially those in under-resourced communities, who struggle in Colorado’s rocky terrain of mental health. We aspire to transform this landscape by publishing inclusive, solutions-based news and resources. We focus on Thrivers and Changemakers, events, policies and programs that are elevating and normalizing the human journey toward mental health.

I launched Moodfuel for personal reasons and community benefit. Personally, I struggle with mental illness and neurodivergence. As the daughter of an immigrant father, who survived the WWII death camps, and an Indigenous mother, who was abandoned as a child, I absorbed generational trauma and survived neglect, alcoholism and sexual abuse. These lived experiences have provided me with a deep understanding of marginalization and mental health challenges. Plus, I’ve lost relatives, friends and colleagues to suicide. So, supporting people in recovery from trauma and despair has become my Why. Helping others helps me.

Regarding the community, Colorado is marketed as the “healthy living” state, but 32%, or 1.8 million of our residents, self-reported mental health needs before the pandemic blew up. Of those people, 455,000 were unable to access mental healthcare because many were members of under-resourced communities.

Through Moodfuel, I’m working toward a future where all Coloradans get the help they need when they need it regardless of ethnicity, ability, language, gender identity, sexual preference or socioeconomic status. As a statewide community, we will transform the Centennial State into a place where neighbors feel capable of improving their own resilience.

Renata, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a Coloradan who struggles with mental illness and neurodivergence and I’m proudly mixed Indigenous (Mvskoke). Lived experience has provided me with a deep understanding of the strife created by adverse childhood experiences, generational trauma and marginalization. Plus, I’ve lost relatives, friends and colleagues to suicide. So, supporting people in recovery from trauma and despair has become my Why.

I’ve worked as a social justice journalist, Associated Press elections reporter and tech writer, and moved to Colorado from Chicago for the glorious mountains. Given all the marketing Colorado as the healthy living state, I was shocked to learn that we ranked last in access to mental healthcare and 6th in suicides in 2022 and we haven’t improved much since. This realization coincided with an invitation to participate in the national Google News Initiative Startups program, which enabled me to launch Moodfuel in Oct 2022. Unfortunately, I needed to take a year off after 2 family deaths, but walked my resilience talk by returning to this essential work in Feb. 2024.
Now, with fierce determination and the support of like-minded community members, I’m publishing Moodfuel to increase mental health equity and access to care by offering inclusive, solutions-based news and resources for neighbors who struggle, particularly folks who live in under-resourced or marginalized communities.

I am very proud to say that Moodfuel is the only news organization to focus solely on mental health statewide in Colorado. We listen, listen, listen to neighbors from the frontier rural plains and valleys to our densely populated Front Range to mountain communities about their challenges to achieving mental wellness. Being community-informed and supported guides our independent reporting and focus.

We also provide the Moodfuel Resource Guide on the website, a library of links to learnings, listeners and supportive content available 24/7 statewide. It’s my second baby, an important pillar of community support that supplements the reporting we do and I work weekly on maintaining and improving it.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

When I launched Moodfuel in Oct 2022, I also was caring for my father through in-home hospice. Those were very tough times emotionally and physically because while I had all the new-business, entrepreneurial concerns about marketing, accounting, budgeting, planning, etc., they paled next to my father’s awful, end-of-life struggles in my home.

Then, after he passed, as if the universe really wanted to drive home a point, my beloved aunt, my heart mother, died in a crime-involved death. That event almost took me out. I had to stop everything and grieve the loss of both my loved ones, protect myself emotionally and take action to pursue some justice. I had no more head- nor heartspace for anything else. I shut down Moodfuel with the message to readers that I was pausing to practice self-compassion and added a graphic containing one of my favorite quotes, “When you feel you can’t do something, add the word ‘yet.'”

I thought I’d only be away a couple of months, but 11 months passed before I healed enough to rise again. During that time, I gained a profound insight: there will always be business worries and unfinished tasks, but being present for family, friends, community — and most importantly, myself – is what really matters. This realization was a precious gift and I will always cherish and act on it.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

In the Google News Initiative (GNI) Startups program, I was taught that moving forward meant acting, experimenting and approaching anyone and everyone to gain customer insights to build a news business. Success equaled more readers, increased engagement, industry recognition and, of course, revenue flow. These lessons about prompt action and interaction were reemphasized at conferences, during meetings and in online networking. Many of my peers in the GNI program hit the ground fast in developing their businesses and moving toward success.

Well, I learned very quickly that reporting on mental health in a state where 1.8 million residents self-report some form of mental distress is very different from covering city council meetings or investigating political bribes. The social-benefit, solutions-based journalism I do is all about relationship-building using a calm, respectful approach. Nothing is hurried or confrontational. Going on to the next person, the next story, the next deadline — boom, boom, boom — doesn’t work.

Most of the people I talk to are often stigmatized because mental health is not yet understood and normalized as health. Therefore, I need to be very intentional and trauma-informed. It takes time to build trust, to show, not just say, that I mean no harm and have a genuine interest in their stories. I want to help not exploit. Fortunately, I excel at moving through different cultures respectfully, listening more than I speak and engaging people in meaningful, sometimes fraught discussions about very personal issues.

So, now, I try very hard not to compare the pace of Moodfuel’s work and growth to other small news outlets. What I do is very different, but also, I’d like to think, much more fulfilling because I really am making a difference in readers’ and residents’ lives. Moodfuel gives people hope and that’s a resource in short supply in Colorado.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.moodfuel.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moodfuelco/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Moodfuel
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renatahill/
• Other: If you’d like to write for Moodfuel or have questions about our work, contact us at [email protected].

Image Credits
barbershop_reporting: Renata sits with Jay Hardy while reporting on the Black Men’s Project at a barbershop in Colorado Springs, CO Donkey_therapy: Donkey Joy gives Renata some much needed furry snuggles near Elizabeth, CO LGBTQ_reporting: Renata reports on the work of Pasha Ripley’s Parasol Patrol shielding LGBTQ+ high school students from harassment in Castle Rock, CO Moodfuel_booth: Renata on the Moodfuel Rural Life Listening Tour in Moffat, CO Moodfuel: logo and tag Podcasting: Renata speaks about Moodfuel on the Bucket List Community Café podcast in Denver, CO