LWV News:
The next League of Women Voters of Los Alamos (LWV) Lunch with a Leader will feature Española Pathways Shelter Executive Director Dena Moscola and Interfaith Coalition Coordinator Dr. Tyler Taylor, 11:45 a.m.–1 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 20, at the Unitarian Fellowship Hall, 1738 North Sage. There will be no Lunch with a Leader in December.
Moscola’s and Dr. Taylor’s main focus is preventing homelessness and expanding treatment of addiction disorders in Española.
When Moscola moved to New Mexico from New Jersey 10 years ago, her first new friend was from Española and struggling with heroin addiction. Moscola soon learned that this small town faced serious struggles with generational addiction, poverty, and homelessness. She helped her friend into rehab only to discover that there were many gaps and barriers in the system. Her frustrations turned into a deep desire to help the members of this community get the support they deserve.
Five years later, in December of 2019, Moscola was hired by the Española Pathways Shelter as their executive director. She led the opening of Española’s first warming center, first low-barrier homeless shelter, first Transitional Housing Program, and Northern New Mexico’s first SMART Recovery Program, while simultaneously overseeing large renovations and the purchase of a motel.
In 2022, Moscola took a step back only to return two years later to bring the agency back to stability. Since her return in March 2024, she has led the complete reorganization of Pathway’s financial management system, the upgrade of all policies and procedures, and is rebuilding relationships with supporters and the community through facts and transparency.
Dr. Taylor is a retired physician and Los Alamos resident. After growing up in Alabama during the Civil Rights era and going to college in Virginia, he got his MD from the University of Alabama School of Medicine and then worked in a small-town family practice in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley for 21 years. In 2000, he, his wife, and daughter moved to Los Alamos, where he practiced for 18 more years.
After retiring, Dr. Taylor became intensively involved in healthcare reform efforts in New Mexico, joining the Board of the Health Security Campaign for New Mexicans. For the last 15 months, he and several others have been building the Interfaith Coalition on Homelessness (ICOH), growing from four religious congregations to 13 in Española and Los Alamos over that time. This nonprofit strictly focuses on addressing homelessness and its many causes in the Española Valley. A major focus has been on how to greatly expand treatment of addiction disorders in partnership with multiple facilities in that community. Other efforts are more preventative or entail directly helping those who are unhoused. ICOH is now undertaking eight projects and has about 75 participants.