Stephanie Felix-Sowy is the first woman — and first Latina — to serve as president of the Service Employees International Union’s Colorado branch, Local 105.

SEIU Local 105 represents over 8,000 workers in health care, property services, public service and airports. With Felix-Sowy taking over, there are now four women of color leading the local organization. The majority of the union’s members are women, she said.

Being chosen to serve as president by the union’s worker-led board was humbling for Felix-Sowy, and she looks forward to hearing from the union’s members on their needs.

“It’s not a decision that was made by one or two individuals, it’s a decision that has been made and will continue to be made by the folks that I’m so proud to stand next to,” Felix-Sowy said. “I feel a heavy responsibility to continue meeting our values, because what we’re really seeing across the country and in Colorado is workers are fed up and uniting. Taking back some of that decision-making power is really coming through as the answer.”

She’s taking over after the former president led the Colorado chapter for almost a decade, and he’s confident she’s got what it takes to successfully lead the union.

“I definitely relied upon for advice and counsel as I was trying to figure out things when I was president,” former Local 105 President Ron Ruggiero said. “She’s among the best I’ve ever seen.”

Ruggiero had worked with Felix-Sowy for over seven years, and he said she has the two most important qualities a leader needs that cannot be taught: good judgment and emotional intelligence.

At least 10 times, the majority of the management team would be headed in one direction until Felix-Sowy came in and shared a different perspective, and Ruggiero said she was right every time.

Felix-Sowy said she was hooked on union work after getting involved with SEIU in San Antonio.

“Just watching the process of workers who had been working in a place — some of them 20 plus years — not feeling respected, not feeling they’re receiving what they were worth, not feeling dignity in that work after so many years,” Felix-Sowy said. “Just kind of taking that process and owning what they were going to do, which was demand respect. I was hooked.”

She spent the last 14 years working with the organization across the country helping working folks build their own unions. About half of that time was spent outside of Colorado, but Felix-Sowy said she knew she wanted to come back home to where she was born and raised.

The Fight for $15 home care campaign in Colorado is what brought Felix-Sowy back, where she worked as a coordinator in 2015. She said this expanded into helping health care workers across the state form unions, and she spent the last seven years serving as the union’s external health care director and deputy director.

“Our goal locally as SEIU 105 has just really been we cannot have economic justice without racial justice,” Felix-Sowy said. “We can’t have a society that really meets the needs of all unless we take on these big fights, and we take them on in our units where we have collective bargaining agreements.”