Jen Carruthers

Jen was only the second female-identifying board president of Capital City Pride (CCP) in the organization’s forty-five year history. Prior to her assuming this role, the lesbian community had begun to withdraw from Capital City Pride due to a lack of representation; over the five years of Jen’s tenure, during which she steered CCP into its most successful iteration to date, women became its most heavily engaged audience.

Capital City Pride is one of the fastest growing Pride Festivals in the country, featuring a unique and rapidly growing year-round schedule of diverse programming. Jen’s contributions of talent and resources to CCP have garnered not only enthusiastic local engagement but regional and national attention as well. During her years as Board Vice President and later as Board President, Jen co-led CCP’s Pride Fest from a modest local event attracting 2,500 attendees in 2017 to the largest LGBTQ+ cultural gathering in the state of Iowa and one of the most robust Pride organizations in the world, welcoming over 50,000 attendees in June of 2023.

In recent years many organizations have reached out to Jen with interest in replicating CCP’s incredible philanthropic success under her leadership, and in 2022 BRAVO Greater Des Moines honored CCP with their prestigious Spotlight Award for creatively pivoting and growing the organization’s programming, funding, and attendance despite a global pandemic.

In just two and a half years, Jen created and executed CCP’s most robust fundraising strategy since its inception, working alongside board colleagues to raise a record-breaking $1.2 million.

Capital City Pride (CCP)