Kristie Neslen has lived in Santa Fe for about 35 years and has been active in the LGBTQ and arts communities. She moved to Santa Fe from the San Francisco Bay Area where she saw the most vibrant, diverse members of the community be driven from their homes by income inequality. She is determined not to let that happen in Santa Fe. Her background is professional writing, editing, research and training, including for software startups in the Bay Area and for Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, where she was a member of a diversity working group.