Our Story

Heather Starr and Stephanie Wood were already deep in the work — both experienced advocates in the anti-trafficking field, already connected to the organizations and people doing this work in Colorado. Together, they saw what the field was getting right, what it was getting wrong, and where survivors were consistently falling through the cracks.

For Heather, what kept coming back was a conviction she had carried for years: if I can help, I should. She had the knowledge, the relationships, and the drive to build something better. That wasn't arrogance — it was accountability. If the capacity to make things better existed, doing nothing with it wasn't an option.

For months, the two talked about someday. Someday they'd build something different. Someday, when the timing was right, when they had the resources, when everything lined up — they'd create the organization they kept wishing existed.

And then they leaped.

They had no office. No website. Not even an organization name yet. What they did have were six clients — survivors who had built a bond of trust with Heather and Stephanie through their previous work and who chose to keep going, even into the unknown, because of that relationship.

From the start, Heather and Stephanie brought with them something just as important as their expertise: the relationships they had already built across Colorado's victim services community. Rather than starting from scratch, they deepened and expanded those partnerships — working alongside the organizations already doing this work, not in competition with them, but in collaboration. Those ties became part of Lotus's foundation, and cultivating them remains central to how we operate today.